My great grandmother built our pond about 15 years ago. I have just started taking my little girl down there fishing. No one has been down there since. All that we can catch is catfish 8 inches long (and I mean a bunch of them). No big ones. Why are only small catfish being caught?

Welcome to PBF JB2!

I suspect you have a pond full of stunted bullheads. Can you post a picture of the ones you are catching to get a confirmed ID?

Bill D.

Ill have to go down and catch some tomorrow but the main difference is the fork tail correct?

I found a picture. This is the only big one that we caught, but I bet we caught 30 very small ones tho.

Yes, bullheads have a "squared" tail. The fish in your photo is either a blue or channel. I can't tell from the photo. A channel that size usually has a few small black spots along the flanks. The channel has a more rounded anal fin with less rays (less than 30) than a blue.

I will go catch some smaller ones tomorrow and post pics, but if they are channel catfish, why are all of them so small? Is the pond overstocked?

That pic appears to be of a channel catfish.

How big is the pond?

If the pond has channel cats and they are breading successfully (or overstocked to begin with), then you may have an overpopulated pond that needs to have a bunch of them removed to make more room and, hence, more available food for the remaining fish.

That fish looks real healthy, so it's not too bad of a situation to be in.

Get some pics of the smaller ones to identify. If bullheads are present, it may be time to do some trapping and really get their numbers down.

There's allot of things that can be considered and you are in the right place to get great advise. Stick around and welcome to the club!

Are catfish the only species present in the pond?

OK so I just got back from the pond. A little background and my intentions with the pond. My great grandmother stocked channel catfish and brim (havent caught any of them in a long time) in the pond 15 years ago. Its about 1-1.5acres. We fed them regularly and caught some big catfish out of there. In the past 15 years, no one has bothered to keep it maintained.
I have a 5 year old girl and another one on the way. I want to be able to take them down there and catch fish, to eat if we want to. Good size fish.
All that I am catching now are small catfish and they are definitely channel catfish and I mean a bunch of them!!. Is it overpopulated? Guess they have been reproducing.
We have recently started feeding again (about a month now) and we put about 2000 fathead minnows in there a couple days ago.
I really appreciate all the feedback.

Sounds like you got catfish! The fatheads were a snack for the catfish. If it were mine I’d ad a bunch of larger BG to jumpstart the food chain. Remove a bunch of the catfish. If you don’t want them. They pull good for a youngster to have fun with. Then maybe after the BG get a foothold then one could add LMB to the mix to help eat some of the baby catfish.

Kinda unusual in Texas to get successful channel cat reproduction. As fry, they go everywhere in schools and are easily picked off by larger fish. Do you have bluegills or bass in the pond?

I dont have any bass in the pond that I know of. My great grandmother did stock bluegill when she first built it but I havent seen any since then.
Should I be trying to get the bluegill back stocked in the pond? If so what size do yall think I should start with?

Since you apparently have some good size CC in there you might need to add large BG so the don’t get eaten ...... they might anyway if the CC are huge as I suspect they are. If that’s the case you might want to get the big ones out cause they can eat bout ang size BG that you can put in there. You say that you are feeding... are any other fish showing up to feed?

Minnows and catfish are the only thing that I see. Im sure there are bigger catfish in my pond but I sure cant catch them.

It may be the little CC are so numerous they beat the big ones to your bait. I would try fishing with 4 to 5 inch shiners to see if there are larger CC. IME shiners are great bait for larger CC and too big for the small CC to bite.

Thanks I will try some bigger bait to see if I can catch some bigger ones.

Also might try some 3-4” BG if you have access to them.... they can’t hardly refuse that

if you don't have the time to dedicate to waiting around on a catfish to eat the big bait, just jug line them and check every 12hrs or so

I use a 1/2 gallon milk jug with 42” line and a live BG or cut BG throw it out and wait for them to hit it.