Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Catfish Biting Catfish?

I caught this medium sized (for our pond) female 19" CC today. At first I thought the markings were scratches from the fishing line, but after I lost half the skin on my thumb picking the CC up I realized another (bigger) CC could have grabbed ahold of her back and abraided the skin with that sandpaper-like mouth. The curves do appear to be kind of mouth shaped. There's a nearly matching mark on her other side but the lens fogged and this one pic is all that came out.

how far down are the abrasions on the CC's body.....more towards tail or more toward head?

Theo, my larger fish, that I assume to be female, all have those types of marks just behind the head in late spring and early summer.

I figure it to be mating behavior but Greg says they get skinned up trying to get under rocks for spawning. I have some submerged rock ledges so, in my case, it might be true.

DIED, the marks were just behind the dorsal fin, pretty much smack dab in the middle of the body.

DD, I'd guess this girl had already spawned - absolutely no eggs in her. Water temps have certainly been high enough for long enough. I even have 1 rock pile and 2 field tile piles that might entice the spawning CC.

I guess I should have asked her...

Theo, when I harvest catfish I keep them in a tank until I have enough or have time to clean them. They always have marks like that and the longer they are in there the worse they are. I first suspected it was them rubbing on the pre-filter but noticed that the really small ones don't get marks. Then, I had one by itself for a week--no marks. I added a smaller one and it had marks in a day. I suspected it to be bites.
Then one day I caught a four pound male. A few days later, I put a two pound female with him. The next day the female was almost dead and had a hole in her side.
I am conviced that catfish, especially males, bite each other.

"The case in solv-ved!"

My CC aren't all that crowded, except at feeding time. Which is when I caught this one. Barring better evidence or someone the stature of Bill Cody bringing stone tablets down to the pond with contrary indications (Bill holds the record for improving my knowledge when it sorely needs it ), I will file this away as bite marks.

Theo, My wife and I were fishing in a pond with mixed CC and BC. She caught a 6 pound CC, and we strung it up on a 6' stringer. We continued fishing, and after a while there was a huge ruckus at the stringer. We figured the 6 pounder was trying to break loose, and paid little attention to it. Well, we caught another fish and went to put it on the stringer. The 6 pounder was bitten nearly in half!

I have seen several more CC which were marked up at the feedring in the last month or so, including one that had so much pigment scraped of both the right and left sides that it looked like it had a mohawk. I am coming to believe many of the abrasions are from the CC slipping into ceramic field tiles (which I have piled up in 2 places for structure) to use them as spawning cavities (as DD/GG stated), probably in the June timeframe.

Caught this male last night, I hope for his sake spawning was worth it.

Theo,
The abrasions are definitely bite marks. During spawning season, male channel catfish fight. When they fight, they bite each other. It's a "survival of the fittest" thing. The biggest, toughest males dominate the pecking order for breeding, and aggressiveness gets the earliest ripe females.
The marks on the recently caught fish are remnants of an injury, infected with some type of bacterial infection. Given time, that infection will heal, and cover with dark pigmented scar tissue, such as the top photo shows on the fish's belly.

Theo:

That cat is what we'd call a "ponehead" or "all poned up". Their heads get all swollen and they get pretty dark during till after the spawn. I've caught 10# flatheads on 4# CC (bank lines), so they do get "bit".