Kansas B.A.S.S. Federation Nation

I have good news!!!  This week we've had 14 spawns on the mats with many more to come over the next few days.  Jason and Josh are treating the eggs for fungus prevention and placing them in the hatching troughs.  Jason says these eggs should hatch in 2-3 days.  They are then fed brine shrimp for a few days and will be ready to be shipped to Hillsdale Reservoir next week. Staff will be stocking the fry in the most suitable habitat at Hillsdale to maximize survival. They have collected baseline data on the wild spawn from previous years and will be monitoring the success of the stocking over the next few years.

This is by far the earliest we have ever been able spawn largemouth bass, and the theory is these early bass will be able to feed on gizzard shad the entire year.  This should result in increased overwinter survival as they will have superior fat reserves and much larger size than the wild spawn fish that will hatch in mid-May.

I will keep you posted as things progress, but I can tell you I'm really excited and proud our hatchery staff on this breakthrough.

We've now collected 36 spawns and have stocked 132,000 bass fry at Hillsdale with at least another 300,000 to go.  We are still 3 weeks ahead of the peak of the wild spawn (May 15th), so the next round of stocking should still have competitive advantage. 

There will be a short video showing the project on our web site soon.  kdwp.state.ks.us

We have a short video on our website that will be live tomorrow on the Meade project.  You can also go to this link www.youtube.com/watch

We are continuing to spawn more brooders over the next 3 weeks with those offspring slated for Hillsdale. 

We will be stocking the third time at Hillsdale tomorrow bringing the total number of bass stocked to over 250,000 so far.  Another release is slated for next Monday.

We placed some of the bass in a temporary enclosure last time to get a handle on initial survival, and the fish did really well, so they seem to be adapting to the lake's water and food supply.

The water level is up from recent rains and that means small bass will have some extra cover to protect them.  So overall conditions for initial survival look good.

I've copied a portion of Tom Mosher's report on the background information collected last year concerning bass growth and gizzard availability to young bass (see below).  You can see why it is hard for bass to survive their first year when the shad are as big as they are.  We hope these early bass will have a better chance to feed on shad this year than their wild cousins.

"During June, 67 YOY largemouth bass were sampled in 33 seine hauls.  Size ranged 38-58 mm with major peaks at 46, 47, and 50 mm.  Gizzard shad sampled during that time ranged from 40-70 mm.  Gizzard shad spawning peaked in mid May at Hillsdale."