Spotted/Kentucky Food Fish

[dtrs5kprs]

3 hours ago, Champ188 said:

Just pickin at ya, pal. We love ya.

Bring it to me medium rare, and I will finish cooking it over the centerpiece candle.

[bfishn]

On 9/13/2017 at 8:44 AM, jte54 said:

There is a large Asian market for them near the larger cities.  From what I gather the buyers are near Chicago.  I have been told by my supervisor that there are some fish hauler/transporters ( middle men) ready to pick them up and take them up there.  Also for the last two years or so we had a Chinese postdoc from Chicago and she would mentioned there were many people in the Asian communities up that way that bought a lot of largemouth bass.

jte54, It seems we've run your thread thru the wringer as we're prone to do. Glad you're sticking it out.

I hatched, raised, & sold trout for a living thru most of the 90's, so I understand some of your situation. You've found a demand for a unique product, and you're looking for a way to fill it. Been there, done that. For it to flourish enough to make a living on, you have to be able to produce X volume for Y $ less that you can sell it for. That's a lot harder to do with bass than for trout or catfish. What I know about that;

If you're growing trout, you most likely have a spring fed facility that allows year round peak growth rates. Catfish ponds in your neck of the woods get what, 5 months growth? Bass ponds will be about the same. If you're providing temperature controlled silos or things of that nature, that cost has to be paid for up front.

Trout feed is very expensive, being 75-90% fish protein, and the single biggest cost of production. Catfish feed is cheap in comparison, being grain & fat. Last I knew, 'bass feed' didn't commercially exist, but the SOTA products were at least as expensive as trout feed, at least thru fingerling stage.

Neither trout nor catfish need be trained to feed like  bass do. They don't eat each other either (much). Barring any catastrophes,  you'll harvest nearly as many trout or cats as you hatch. Can you do that with bass now?

Bottom line, there's a reason that nobody's selling bass to those who want it (yet).

Don't let that stop you. I learned to do what I did primarily from a few old texts written by guys like you. Guys with dreams contributed to the pool of knowledge thru their failures as much as their successes. It's the old, "if at first you don't suceed..."

On the other hand, your bluegill project sounds like a winner... :-)

[jte54]

15 hours ago, bfishn said:

jte54, It seems we've run your thread thru the wringer as we're prone to do. Glad you're sticking it out.

I hatched, raised, & sold trout for a living thru most of the 90's, so I understand some of your situation. You've found a demand for a unique product, and you're looking for a way to fill it. Been there, done that. For it to flourish enough to make a living on, you have to be able to produce X volume for Y $ less that you can sell it for. That's a lot harder to do with bass than for trout or catfish. What I know about that;

If you're growing trout, you most likely have a spring fed facility that allows year round peak growth rates. Catfish ponds in your neck of the woods get what, 5 months growth? Bass ponds will be about the same. If you're providing temperature controlled silos or things of that nature, that cost has to be paid for up front.

Trout feed is very expensive, being 75-90% fish protein, and the single biggest cost of production. Catfish feed is cheap in comparison, being grain & fat. Last I knew, 'bass feed' didn't commercially exist, but the SOTA products were at least as expensive as trout feed, at least thru fingerling stage.

Neither trout nor catfish need be trained to feed like  bass do. They don't eat each other either (much). Barring any catastrophes,  you'll harvest nearly as many trout or cats as you hatch. Can you do that with bass now?

Bottom line, there's a reason that nobody's selling bass to those who want it (yet).

Don't let that stop you. I learned to do what I did primarily from a few old texts written by guys like you. Guys with dreams contributed to the pool of knowledge thru their failures as much as their successes. It's the old, "if at first you don't suceed..."

On the other hand, your bluegill project sounds like a winner... :-)

Bfishn, cool thing you brought up catfish feed because our bluegill get fed 3.5 35% protein catfish feed and they do great.  We push them really hard as larvae and they get fed a 45% protein diet as fingerlings.  Then soon as they can eat a 3.5 pellet they get tagged and moved to the ponds.  Wished I had some recent data to share but I don't and it is not comparable to previous generations because we had to do things differently because we moved facilities and had to work out some kinks with this new building while dealing with leaky ponds.  Hopefully next year we will be back on course.  As far as feed training bass we have a pretty solid method worked out and it works for crappie too.  

As far as survival rate of bass at time of harvest vs initial stocking.....IDK .  My supervisor has a great deal of experience and I can ask him then get back to you.  I do know that one of the reasons we are choosing to do spotted bass is because they have great size uniformity among a corhort according to my boss..  Maybe there is less cannibalism because of their smaller mouth just a guess.