So I have this pond close to my house. Gets super deep, crystal clear water, lots of surface vegetation along the bank. Great pond for sight fishing, and for a beginner like me, I can actually see what my fly does when I strip it or twitch it. Very helpful. Most bass are in the 1-2lb range, but there are some monsters in here. On top of the bass, the pond is loaded with sunfish up to around 7-8" which is big for this neck of the woods. You can see so many fish just walking the banks, but they are super tight lipped in this pond. Still fun to bump fish in the face with your fly.

So what was strange today, is that I saw 0 bass, 0 sunfish (and you ALWAYS see bass and sunfish in this pond, hell even catfish), but a TON of big A$$ Tilapia. A few dead ones but most were cruising the shallows. I threw every fly in my box. I was bumping them in the mouth. I even tried to foul hook a few just to say I caught one. Nada. So if anybody has any fly suggestions, lemme know. The strange part is that I've been fishing this pond since I was 10. And have never, ever seen a tilapia in it. I haven't fished it probably since November, but I didn't see any there then. These were the biggest tilapia I have ever seen.

Also caught my first crappie on the fly! He was only about 3" long but he hit a mylar(sp?) minnow. Thinking about sinking some brush piles in one of the deep corners actually. This pond is pretty big, and super deep. I asked the city if I could launch my yak and they said no. Bummer, it would open up so much more access.

Thanks for reading, and if you know what flies catch tilapia lemme know!

Launch anyway, until you get jacked, you'll probably even then get by with an apology.

Hey this is a great idea, 'act first, then apologize when necessary'. I think I'm on to something !

Make sure you're talking to the right people at the city. I've personally experienced being told "no" and then, when I mentioned that in passing to Parks & Recreation Director, finding out that the person who'd said "no" had zero authority, had basicly been performing self-proctology.

Probably not the case in your instance. But it's worth a bit of research.

So, this happened to my lake as well. The HOA complains about the lake not being pretty enough cuz of weeds then somebody who thinks they're a know it all is like, "we should put tilapia in the lake cuz that will remove the weeds and everything will be perfect."
Things will not be perfect....
So as you have seen, the cold weather kills them so if you are lucky the HOA will see this and say okay no more stocking them.
But if not, they will eat all the vegetation, this will messup the gill population as they have no where to hide which means happy bass. But then the food supply will be gone which means a decline inthe bass pop.
So besides this, they will be making nests everywhere. They start spawning every time the water reaches a certain temperature. They are very aggressive and chase bass off. Even when the bass want to spawn.

Anywho, there are a few flies you can use to catch them. I have them in my neighborhood pond and I like sight fishing for them! Water is clear as well.
So when they start to nest use black wooly buggers. Just let the fly sink to their nest they will either hit it while its sinking or will hit it when its in their nest. If they aren't going for it drag it through their nest.
If they are just hanging on the surface or cruising use dry flies mosquito pattern. Or anything that is a bright yellow. They hate bright yellow flies.

Could also try a float tube if they OK that.....I have had a few tilapia on Fayetteville lake with a small Mylar backed pheasant tail nymph
Mike

Waiting on George to chime in here as well. He runs tilapia in his ponds annually.
Pretty wild that they've survived this deep into winter. There must be a warm place in that pond.

This pond has so much vegetation, I don't think tilapia are going to do a damn thing. The grass carp they put in here didn't. It has a really deep side (20'ish) and a really shallow side (6"), and all the living tilapia were in the shallow side. I'm wanting to go back this week if we don't get rain. I love blackend tilapia!

Tilapia are famous for not taking flies readily, they are omnivorous but vegetation makes up a majority of their diet, you may have seen them in a die-off if the water temp was very low.

A few were dead, a few very sluggish but others were cruising the shallows. It was in the 70s today so they were fairly active.

I have been using size 12 and 14 pink squirrels, bead head pheasant tails, prince nymphs, Adams and elk hair caddis down here in Honduras. Just standard trout flies have worked for me.. Fished about 36" under a strike indicator with a slow twitch type retrieve.

Thanks for all the feedback. I plan to eat some tilapia by the weekend!