Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Large Catfish Kill

Hello Everyone. I would like to get some thoughts on a catfish die-off I found today. These were all large(er) 3-4lb channel cats that died, so far about 6 of them.

The pond is total about 1 acre. Thanks to our south texas drought the run-off filled pond got down to a small 30ft fish hole about 4ft deep. The only fish that lived through the drought were catfish and damm carp. Birds ate most everything else - it was like shooting fish in a.... well you know.

two weeks ago we had a rain that filled the pond back to it's full glory, about 95%. Lots of cats seemed to have lived, small and large. Last weekend we had the big storms (tornado in San Antonio!) and this started a big run-off. Today, 4 days after the rain we still have a trickle running in and out of the pond.
We lost lots of little cats and was also glad to see lots of my carp swimming down the street.

This morning we found 12+ big cats just sitting at the mouth of the intake - I assumed eating whatever was getting washed into the pond. By this afternoon we found 6 of them floating and still see a couple more having problems.

The pond is very muddy. The pasture where the run-off comes from has not been fertilized in a couple years (due to drought) so there is no bloom in the pond. I checked the temp, about 63 degrees @ 3ft deep.

I assume it is related to the drought stress and the new water, perhaps the PH? any other thoughts?

BTW - I am stocking today - minnows, CNBG - perhaps a few bass again. Thanks all.

Hey Dog I am no expert, but I would have your water checked before I stocked anything else!! If your cats are dieing off then I have a hard time seeing CNBG living. I would think Catfish can take a lot v.s. CNBG. I have no idea what you problem could be, but your right there could be something in the run off water?? Maybe a bad PH flux? A real big change in water temp quick from run off?? I don't know but I would wait to spend my money if you still have some fish that are not acting right that's not a good sign. Hope you find out what it is. If you do let us know.

Good Luck,

I'm betting that you wound up with either a temp change problem or an oxygen shortage.

I am beginning to think oxygen too. This is the deep end of the pond (we call it the 'cat end'), not only water depth but also shoreline. This leg of the pond has much less wind action than the front shallow half of the pond (the 'bass end'). This happened early in the morning, about 6am when we noticed. Also, only the large(er) cats were affected.

Surprisingly there was another cat in that group of fish at the mouth of the pond, but Henry the black lab plucked it out of the water before I got there and carried it half way around the pond before dropping it for an old tennis ball.

I put him back, and this eve I see him swimming - albeit with a few holes in his back -- but still alive for now. There were no dead cats in the 'bass end' of the pond... huummm...

The fish truck comes to town only once a month so I had to get new stock for the pond. It may be just in my head but this time I did have more floaters than normal. The FHM did fine, I lost about 20% of the small bass - and 10% of the CNGB were slow going, very slow.
Also, the fish truck route changed since the last time I bought some stock - this time we were the last stop of the day. I think those fishes were tired by the time I got them into the pond. So the pond is on it's way back I hope. Maybe aeration someday, perhaps a water well for the pond to stay off the next drought. Thank you guys for the input.

In an O2 crash, the bigger fish always seem to go first.

Just to follow-up: It has been about a week and since the original die-off. I had two more large fish float; one cat and one LMB. Weed growth in the pond has somewhat slowed and the water color is still dark, but less chocolate brown - more blue-black.

I have not seen any of the newly installed fish floating since the original install date, however with the turtles, snakes and frogs in the pond I rarely ever see anything floating.

I expect it will take a while again to feed train the new bluegill. My last group before the drought would follow the polaris around the pond waiting for feed. Although no other small fish survived the drought, the baby catfish seem to number in the hundreds or thousands. Guess I need to find a predator fish that eats lots of 3" catfish.

Though it was sad to lose a good size LMB, it was just as intresting to know he was in there. In the last week I also fished a one lb LMB as well - guess somthing other than cats and carp made it through the dry summer.