Are cattails recemended in any situation? I only ask because some of my best fishing experiences were at ponds that were totally surrounded by them. the cattails were from the bank out to 3 feet of water. We would see who could get their lure closest to them without getting snagged. This seemed to be the key because they would often strike the second the lure hit water. The only bad thing was you could not fish from the bank . Most of the pond is over 6 feet deep. Is there a depth that the tails will no longer reach, or will they completely take over? Do the tails help with soil erossion along the bank? How about BG & fathead minnow spawning?

If most of your pond is 6ft, cattails won't be growing in your pond. To determine if one wants cattails in their pond, one would have to decide the purposes of their pond. Cattails do not only have attractive fish cover, but attract assortment of other creatures. Muskrats tend to favor cattails to do dances to piss off pond owners.(They even, Possibly, make blowgun devices out reeds any other suitable materials)
I would assume any vegetation would be helpful around pond banks, not just the cattail.
Native americans ate many parts of the cattail back in the day. So the cattail does have many uses. Just keep the floating seed debris out of my eyes on a windy day.

c-tail discussion link: cat-tails

I beg to differ. I have had them out to standing in 6 feet -- maybe deeper! In fact, they were taking over my 3/4 acre pond which has lots of 8 foot water.

I find it to much trouble to keep them controlled. They are no longer welcome along with the muskrats that dig into my dike that are attracted by them.

I will be spraying any little sprout that comes up with Habitat herbicide from now on! Take this you little $%#&*@*

I new something was odd when I saw the link Brettski supplied.
I know the cattails in my locale are not a problem, so what's the deal? Could it be, possibly, be a different species.
Probably.
Narrowleaf cattail and its meaner cousin, a hybrid between 'gentle giant' broadleaf and 'crazy mofo' narrowleaf, are known to be way more invasive than the common broadleaf that is currently in my neck of the ponds.
Exotic cattails have come for you!

Lance...
luv the cameo pic on the website; now I know I'm not alone

(edit)
...Cecil raves
(I hate it when he beats around the bush )

I love threads like this one. When someone calls my office to talk about invasive plants the question typically starts off like this, "When do plants become a problem?" My answer is usually, "When you think they are." Here's the way I see cattails. Nature uses cattails to hold loose soils in place, as these soils move into the water. I don't see cattails as ideal fish cover. There are other, less invasive plants and artificial things you can use for fish cover. I, too, have seen cattails growing in water much deeper than 6 feet, and those cattails rise above the water more than 8 feet. Yes, there are other species, even some dwarf cattails on the market, that people can choose to use to accomplish specific objectives. One important point on this thread, the fishery wasn't great in that original pond because of the cattails. The cattails happened to be involved in the pond, not necessarily a key ingredient to the great fish population. What I mean is this; a pond can develop a great fishery without cattails. Personally, I don't mind a few cattails, but keep them only where you want them.

I'm kind of mixed on the cattails. I still have a lot to learn, but a pond I drained (and hope to redo this year after a few years of being dry) had cattails around it for probably 60 years. You can see where they were on the bank, but I bet the build up after all that time is still less than a foot deep. Maybe some debris washed to pond bottom?

I like the look. I like the fact that it helps prevent bank fishing. I like that they help hold soil. I like fishing near them. I'm not sure what to think regarding small fish hiding out in them. Is that a good or bad thing or both? I don't want them on my dams or elsewhere that I wouldn't want muskrats digging. I don't want them around my island either; but there are a lot of places around my pond that part of me would like to have them. Maybe (probably) more experience will change my perspective.

FWIW... I had some incredible cattails in one of my ponds as it was filling up. I think they just kept getting taller as the water rose until at some point, the stems couldn't support the weight, they fell over, turned yellow, and died out. You couldn't reach bottom with a long paddle and your arm partially in the water (over the side of the boat). I bet it was close to eight feet deep when they fell over. Once they died out, none grew back in that location.

I asked about cattails because I thought about transplanting some in my pond with low water. I do not want a pond surrounded by them by any means. I would just want a few small 10ft patches here and there. I am trying to put cover in the pond in as many forms as possible.My partners in this whole pond building thing like the idea and we are going into this idea knowing that if it gets out of hand we will have to pull them out one at a time. I have never seen cattails in more than 4 feet of water,keep in mind i am in northern kansas.Most of these ponds are at most 6 feet deep and i have never seen one be completely covered with cattail. One more thing, I hope I start a new trend with this whole pond managing thing. People just dont care about these pond, they fish them and take them for all they are worth and then move on to the next one. It is speading fast though almost all my friends and family are just keeping smaller bass for dinner and throwing the larger ones back. This practice would have got you killed 5 years ago.

Ok, so this deep water cattail situation still wasn't registering to me. So I found a couple references that suggest one species grows in deeper water than the other:

I'm assuming I have the common broadleaf cattail, which doesn't spread as fast, nor does it grow in as deep of water.

John Wayne,
Below is a picture of what cattails will do in drought conditions with lowering water level. This area is normally 4 ft. deep with a ”few” cattails in shallow end.




Here’s the solution to our cattail problem – upper end deepened by 4 ft , so should be 8 ft deep when and if it ever rains again.




By the way – I’ll be happy to send you some, but believe me, you don’t want them…..


George Glazener
N.E. Texas

I tend to like them but they are not a problem in my pond. In fact I can't get them to grow all the way around my pond because of the clay. They don't seem to care much for that. I do have some that grow a ways out but in either place I do have some of my best catches.

Cattails! In Texas they can literally take over a pond if the soil is sandy or loose. This can limit you from fishing from the bank in many places, they are also snake havens. However, from a fishing standpoint, they are great. Like Texas 715 said you can have some of your best catches in these areas. Fish will position themselves right at the edge of the Cattails for an easy meal, they also like the cover and shade that they provide. You can flip or pitch a worm or tube on the edge or even one to two feet back into them and catch some really nice fish. I just wish there was a better way to control them, they seem to just keep spreading.

We use touchdown pro herbicide at a 2% solution. With a few herbicide applications once they popup I feel not hard to control at all. MUch worse plants around than these guys and they require much more expensive herbicides.

I am going to give it a try, if things go bad I promise I will not bitch too much.

Does anyone know if cattails would make suitable natural spawning structure for fathead minnows? It seems to me that cattails might also provide a place for FH to hide from predators.

We always have some cattails in the pond and periodically spray them to keep them out of areas that we don't want them in. We also leave some areas untouched in the shallow end to provide some nesting cover for the red winged black birds.

Shorty - I don't think you will get much benefit as spawning substrate for fatheads by cattails. Faheads usually prefer an overhead flat substrate for egg deposition. Depending on the density and size of the stands Cattails do provide some refuge areas for small fish and lots of invertebrates especially since the old stems of cattails remain standing all winter and until new regrowth starts in spring. I would consider cattails a form of "fluffy cover" as opposed to dense cover, since the stems are fairly widely spaced and smaller to medium sized fish can hunt through them pretty good. Catail stands provide good edgelines for fishing.

On the negative side catatils displace more desirable plant species and tend to gradually fill in a pond more than other desirable species that annually produce less biomass. Cattails can relatively qucikly close up a small pond. Over large areas, mowing off the tops after the heads are formed BUT still immature and a SECOND mowing a few weeks later will give considerable natural, non-chemical control.

I was thinking that maybe last years cattails that are laid down right now might just provide that type of cover, but not sure if they would be wide enough for FH minnows to utilize.

I have some extra pallets if you need 'em, Steve.

Bruce, I might have to go with something a little more "aesthetic" than pallets. I may just get a bundle of cedar shingles and plant them in the shallow end of the pond in and around the cattails so they are not very noticable.

My fatheads will spawn on the bottom of a floating piece of styrofoam cup.

What's not asthetic about pallets? All those fancy painters use 'em.

Well, all I can tell you is that the pond owner (my dad) and the primary fish manager (me) have some very different views on what is aestheticly pleasing and whats not out at the pond.

Theo steps up to the plate. He swings - he misses. And again, and again - strike three.

I hope you don't think I was dissing your taste or your father's, Shorty. No insult intended, and I'm sorry if one came across.

No insult taken Theo, while Lusk was at Bruce's for the BG seining we had a conversation afterwards about the goals for "our" pond with Lusk. Long story short, I like the clear water and the weeds in the water, my dad doesn't care for unsightly weeds growing all the way to the surface everywhere. My dad and I are working on having "complementary" goals for the pond rather than "competing" ones. His goals are more aesthectic in nature while mine are more geared towards a healthy LMB and BG population. My comment was kind of an inside joke for Bruce.

Anywho, I understand that any steps I take to improve the fishery in the pond should not conflict with his aesthetic goals.

If you allow some short boards to float amoung the old cattail stems, these would provide lots of space for FH to attach eggs to. The boards would move up and down somewhat with the water level. Cedar shingles will also work good either floated or pushed into the pond bank in shallow water.

Hey John,
I got an idea for you.... If you want to try the cattails fine, I won't discourage you. Here is what I typically advise my customers to do. If you are going to introduce cattails then place them on the side where the wind won't blow the seed into the pond. For example: if the wind generally comes out of the West then plant them in the Eastern part of your pond. If you want to somewhat control them, make sure you cut all the seed pods off as soon as they come up.
Worst case scenario us Rodeo and a surfactant to kill them. Only professionals should use a chemical like Habitat. It has a residual of up to two years in the soil. Not a big deal unless you have trees around the pond, which it will kill everyone!

Interesting observation this morning. I saw a couple of bulls in the creek. They were eating the new cattail shoots. I didn't know they would do that.

I visited a pond at a nearby school around the time I was constructing my pond to observe an electroshocking demo by the ODNR. The pond was 1 acre excavated in the middle of a field with a clay bottom and completed surrounded with cattails. The water was crystal clear due to the plants pulling all the nutrients out of the water, according to the DNR people. The shocking survey turned up some very skinny bass, an 8# CC, a few small skinny BG and Green sunfish. No nutrients=no little fish food=no little fish=no big fish.

Dave,

With the drought we are facing down here my cows have eaten alot of the cattails. I didn't think that they would eat them either but I was wrong when I saw them chomping away.

TX715, I flew down to McAllen last night and drove back today. I saw nothing green until I was just South Of San Antonio. I stopped in Freer and talked to Leonel Garza. He told me that ranchers are feeding the deer pellets. Boy, it looks grim.

My poor pond started filling up with 1" of rain 2 months ago, and is now completely dry again. It is frightening to think about how dry my place is. I'm starting to worry about some 100 year old live oaks that look really stressed.