Thanks partly to research, they were right. Since 1984, when production was at only 10,000 pounds a year, it has increased to more than 15 million pounds annually. Actually, it's a hybrid fish called sunshine bass that's making the splash. A cross between male striped bass and female white bass, sunshine bass grow faster than either parent. Fish farmers Mike Freeze of Keo, Arkansas, and Jackson Currie of Wilmot, Arkansas, are among the leaders in the sunshine bass industry.
Freeze specializes in spawning the parental stocks.
They then sell the juvenile fish to other farmers around the world who grow them to market size at 1.5 to 2 pounds in 18 months. To identify production problems and find solutions, Gerald M. Ludwig, a fish biologist at ARS ' National Aquaculture Research Center at Stuttgart, Arkansas, keeps in contact with Freeze, Currie, and other producers. In the early 1980s, after experimenting with raising microscopic animals called rotifers as fish feed, Currie turned some equipment over to Ludwig. Putting the equipment to good use, Ludwig steadily found ways to improve the survival rate of young fish. Now the norm is 30 percent, and some nursery pond managers do much better.