If a target harvest was (300) catfish per year in what we can call a 1/5 acre pond, I'm thinking aeration is a 'must-have' as the stocking numbers would be more than (300) fish, and the amount of feed needed to bulk those fish up (possibly over 600-700 lbs of feed per year), plus the fish waste would push water quality issues to the max, and maybe over.
What you are talking about is almost a fish-farming venture.
The conventional wisdom on feed to weight-on-fish conversion is 2:1. So, 600 pounds of feed may theoretically only put one pound of weight on each of (300) fish.
I don't think there's enough water-room in a small pond like that to have much of a natural forage base for the catfish to eat on at those high CC stocking numbers.
