Kansas B.A.S.S. Federation Nation

Below is the outcome of a recent meeting on next year's plan for early spawn bass.  We continue to evaluate the 2010 stockings and are looking forward to spring electrofishing.  We hope significant numbers of stocked fish will make it through the winter and recruit into the fishery.  We continue to have problems identifying stocked fish using daily growth rings and that is why we are switching to a chemical marking scheme in 2011.  We are obligating some rearing pond space to raise some of the early spawn bass to a larger size prior to release.  I'm really proud of the efforts of Culture Section.

2011 Meade Hatchery LMB Spawning Plans 
 

The plan for 2011 is as follows: 

1. The 2005 and 2007 year class fish will be used first.  During the 1^st week of January 2011, pond 1 will be lowered and 60 female broodfish will be taken out and placed in the propagation building accordingly.  25 females in each of the raceways and 5 in each of the gray 20’ tanks.  Pond 2 will be lowered the same day and 46 male broodfish will be taken out and placed in the propagation building accordingly.  20 males in each of the raceways and 3 in each of the gray 20’ tanks.  Males will be separated on the upper end of all units from the females on the lower end by the use of a screen.

1. These broodfish will be held at ambient temperature and on a 12 hour light: 12 hour dark light regime.  On March 4, the heaters will be turned on and the water temperatures will be increase to and then held at 68° - 72° F throughout the rest of the spawning measure.  Also, on March 4, the lights will change to a 14 hour light:  10 hour dark light regime and this will continue throughout the spawning measure as well.

1. All broodfish will be fed fathead minnows every 7-10 days until March 18^th.

1. On March 24^th, the separation screens will be pulled and the ♂ and ♀ will be able to mix.

1. On March 31^st, spawning mats will be placed into the raceways and gray tanks.

1. The expected first day of spawns should occur around April 6^th.

1. The expected 1^st day of hatching should occur around April 8^th.

1. After last year we found that at the PRFH facility that egg sac fry do not progress in their development when water temperatures are held at 60°F or below.  Because of this fact we propose that we collect spawns and hatch them until we are able to collect 100,000 egg-sac fry batches.  We will then transfer 100,000 egg sac fry to PRFH where they can hold them and “warehouse” them for several days until their outside production ponds reach 65°F during the day.  When this occurs Mark can heat up the tanks and let the fry progress to swim up stage and be free swimming.  After this occurs the fry will be stocked into 3 ponds until a period of up to 20 days.  These fish will then be harvested marked with OTC and stocked into HILR or CDBR.  Estimated size of the fry will be 20 mm.

1. A second 100,000 fry lot will be taken as egg sac fry to PRFH and developed to swim up fry and started on an intensive brine shrimp feeding study.

1. FARH will also raise a pond of fingerlings as well.  Their fry (100,000) will remain at MEFR until they are ready at FARH (65° F water).  When the time occurs to take the fry to FARH than MEFR will warm the water until the sac fry become swim up stage and then delivered to FARH for stocking into pond 20.  Production and marking of these fish will be the same as the PRFH protocol.

1. The rest of the produced early fry (goal of 700,000), will be handled the same way as last year.  After the fry are swim up stage which occurs at day 7-8 in 70°F water the fish will be marked with the THC method and then delivered and stocked into either HILR or CDBR.

1. When all fry and fingerling requested fry are done being produced.  We want to bring in some wild Clark SFL broodfish we gathered in September of 2010 and see if we can spawn wild strain fish in our facility.