benbrook tilapia ...what next

Benbrook wow

Probably came out if someone's stock tank or little lake during the summer flooding.

Is Benbrook a power plant lake?

no......

Then they shouldn't be a problem. Tilapia can't survive the cold winter. Sure some might survive from year to year if they find a deep hole to make it through the winter, but for the most part, they won't make it. Plus tilapia make EXCELLENT forage for bass, so it's not really a bad thing. They reproduce often which means there will always be tiny feeder fish. or at least until the water cools off and they all kick the bucket.

Wish they was in Palo Pinto Lake

awesome
what did you catch them on?

Crazy , what's next , zebra mussels ?

Caught near marina in one throw with cast net...............Ok, lets say the water perodically coming in through pipes from the east and other places is warmer. Makes sense to me that the piped in water from where ever would be ground temp and maybe make warm spots. Also its been 40 or so years at least that these fish have been stocked or transported around with the most cold tolerant surviving if they survived. Maybe they are becoming more tolerant. Anyway I don't know if I care or not, really in Benbrook. I think I like them better than the yellow bass. When zebra mussels come maybe the water will clear again like it used to be sometime back in the 60's. I am waiting for the arapaima to show up in numbers so I can use some big old topwaters.

I think one breed of talapia can survive in 40degree water. If these things survive the big bass in Benbrook are only going to get bigger!

Just for an FYI, "The pure strain of the blue tilapia, has the greatest cold tolerance and dies at 45 °F (7 °C), while all other species of tilapia will die at a range of 52 to 62 °F (11 to 17 °C)".

Who else here remembers the winter in San Antonio when it got so cold the dead Tilapia clogged up the water pipes at the power plant and SA was without power for several days? 1987 or so.

Yep!!

Actually it was the other way 'round.....the power plant failed and THEN the tilapia died. In the aftermath, restarting the plant may have been problematic with all the dead fish.

From what a person reads here, or elsewhere, they'd think the tilapia is happy and active but once the water temp hits exactly 42 degrees F, the tilapia immediately rolls over deader'n a hammer and that's it.

More like, as water temps cool down, the tilapia get slow and lethargic. for awhile, predators will feast on the sluggish tilapia. Eventually if it doesn't warm up and temps remain at or below the mid to lower forties, the tilapia will succumb, go past lethargic to moribund, then dead.

However, tilapia are programmed to find a place to try and survive. So you'll see them crowded in power plant cooling water outflows, around sewer outfalls, sources of ground water like wells or springs, at heat exchangers, even sunning in shallow water. If they can hang on until it warms up again, well they might just make it to next time, and then to spring.

What gets 'em in places like San Antonio and Southern parts of the state is when it gets cold AND cloudy for a few weeks at a time. Not the short, hard freeze followed by sunny and cool, but the long cool spell of forty at night and forty eight in the day with no sun.

The dead tilapia may all sink and never be seen again, or if it warms a bit, gas up and float, to haunt the shoreline every warm afternoon. The possibility of any of the tilappine fishes developing "cold tolerance" through exposure and survival of a few to reproduce is well studied and has been shown not to occur.

One thing for sure about tilapia, is no matter what political place they hold, biologically they will live where they can and won't where they can't, expanding and retracting their range in places like Texas, with the weather. No law, rule or political border will have an effect on that.