Throwing these videos out here to document the growth experience I've had with blue catfish. I can't remember my stocking rates for sure, but I believe it was about 150 8-10" fish in the fall of 2015, another 100 in the fall of 2016 and then another 300 in the fall of 2017. I've been catching quite a few of the 16 and 17 stockers in the seine. They seem to be averaging about 20" and 15" in size respectively. But so far I have been unable to catch any of the fall 2015 stockers. Due to water clarity improvement my kids got video of a few of them coming in to feed. (I feed about 150lbs of trout guts per week from commercial trout farm) They appear to be 4-6lbs now and EXTREMELY thick compared to the channel cats. Keep in mind 70% of the catfish feeding in this video are channels, some of them up to 15lbs in size. And I also pre apologize as I'm going to double post these videos in a thread I've used to document the renovation of my pond. Anyway I thought they were fun videos.......

TOO very cool! I kept waiting for one to come up and get you by the arm which would be a bummer for you, but would make a startling great video!...

Kinda like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Dnbh4ZpvU

They usually come up and grab it fairly aggressively, but with my water clarity improving they seem a bit skittish. Or they just think I'm ugly now that they can see me.

WOW! That’s neat

They are camera shy.

Just a photo of a 21" incredibly fat blue and some more video of them feeding.....

Awesome video!

Hoping that have such great results once I get forage established.

NEDOC, very cool videos.

Here's a blue we caught this weekend. Incredible body condition.. The largest we've caught at 22" Very happy with this project so far.

Nice looking fish and no doubt happy excited angler. Do you think they will get to 30 lbs? How old is that fish? And have you added any new ones(BC) since the 1st stocking? Nice to see you have this young guy trained to hold a big fish properly.

I believe this fish was stocked either fall of 15 or 16 at 8-10”. As old as blues get I think they’ve definitely got a chance to get to 30lbs. But we certainly won’t know unless I try. That’s one of the reasons I started this post. There’s not much information out there about blue catfish in ponds. I figured I could add a little something.

Thank you for posting. My project will be smaller and behind yours. Still have very little plant life in my 1/2 pond built last summer, Saw small fry which are probably FHM, but could be LCS. Hoping my blues grow like yours once I get to the stage of adding some. Really a pretty fish! Nice to see the young man involved in the project!

RAH, I'm curious to have someone else on the board chronicle their experience. I believe my blues are 10-25% heavier per length than my channels on average. I don't know if this is standard (I doubt it) or if the blues have a feeding niche in my pond that the channels don't. I need to learn to stomach pump these fish and figure out what the difference is.