I tie 'em short and small about 1.5 inches...w/purple and white and a little flash....but have run out of material.

BBrown, I tried up in the reeds/hydrilla back from the spillway area. Are the lilly pads south end of lake?

You guys would be most welcome to join me. I'm trying to get there about once a week...until energy/gas money run out... driving up from north of Livingston usually early during week. Spend most time playing w/reds but love the BG. Have a small CC that trailers well and can launch in a mud hole.

ML...PM me your address and I'll mail you a couple of Bumblebee poppers that worked for me down in FL.

And, yes, the lily pads used to be in the SE arm of the lake (launch and turn left-all the way down-watch***shallow). I have been waiting for the lake to come up some before I go down that way and check them out.

There used to be 10's of thousands of lily pads down that way but a lot has changed since the low water situation presented itself.

PS the lake is dropping again.

Both the southern Big and Little Brown Coves will normally almost pad out by summers end. Little Brown is left of the fishing point. Big Brown is the far south cove and very shallow.

Not yellow over white with olive barring?

(For size reference, that's 3/8" mesh.)

Are the small fry different colours, or are we talking about different tilapia species? Does Fairfield have Mozambique and blue tilapia?

(Meadowlark Ponds tilapia come to the top of Google's image results.
My little photo above is from Fairfield July 2008.)

I bet that, as usual, hatch matching isn't as key as is finding the fish, but I'm just guessing.

i caught some tilapia fry last weekend just to look at them. right now they are about 3/4 to 1 inch long. i'd think you could seine them up and fish them like crickets with good results. millions of them around the banks right now. they are dirty pearly blue colored with olive bars. all of them had little potbellies

Dirty Pearl (or Parker's Dirty Pearl) would be a sweet name for a fly.

Thanks for the heads up on the fry.

Great news, Parker, thanks!

I have a perch trap made especially for those little devils. I'll have to take it down there next trip.

(Maybe they need to cut back their beer drinking.)

Kinda like these?

Yeah, dirty pearly blue is a good description of the fry.

It would really be interesting to see if you could entice a BG on a small live Tilapia fry. There are so incredibly many of the fry in the water. It's quite a sight to see.

Thank you BBrown...PM sent.

Trying it on a dead, fake one is really goofy, isn't it?

Ahhh, my friend, some call it goofy...others call it fishing.

Whatever (legally) works.....