Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Bull head stocking for channel blue hybrids?

What advantage do you see in stocking bullheads?

Well medium blue catfish seem to enjoy eating them on the river, and I thought they multiply at a fast rate.

Funny I was just wondering about a "catfish plus xxxx only" pond today, and couldn't recall reading about any.

In our part of the world, I think I'd do catfish plus BG if I wanted big cats-as prolific as bullheads are, they can't hold a candle to bluegills, which will spawn all summer. Feeding is a good idea, and will really help the gills-and your cats will eat a lot of it as well.

By the way, welcome to the forum.

Welcome..

Trust me bullfrogs don't need an invitation they'll invite thenselves..

If I was trying to grow a certain species of fish to a large size, I wouldn't stock another species of fish that would eat the same food and live in the same area of the pond. Catfish turn piscavorous when they start to get over 3#-5#.

I understand that they may eat the same food when they are near the same size, but once the BC get larger, wont the bullhead become a good source of food? Or am I fooling myself and just stay with BG?

That's a good question that I don't have an answer for! I'm thinking that BH are more fusiform shaped than BG, but the 3 spines on the BH might counteract that shape. The spines will lock in place, where the spines on the BG won't.

Just experiences fishing on river for 15-30lb blues, they seem to get the entire 3-7" BH down the gullet. But it's normally in swift current, not sure if that plays into them feasting or not.

Most of us try to get rid of bullheads.

Although, we did note that most all the bullhead caught in my pond were full of filamentous algae. Perhaps they were eating some organisms living in the algae, but who knows.

At a local lake bullheads are pretty common and they Have some very big pike and musky. My thinking is that because most of the bass are 15 inches or under they can't eat the majority of the bullheads so the musky/pike have a literal smorgasbord of bullheads allowing them to grow to huge sizes. If it was me I wouldn't stock bullheads unless there is a large predator in the pond/lake to control them.

Just my inexperienced opinion I'm by far an expert.

The problem is that a pond is a relatively closed system. Usually you want the prey fish to occupy a different ecological niche than the predator so that they don't compete for the limited food available.

If I was just trying to grow large catfish, I would stock GSH as the primary forage. When 25% of my catfish had reached 14+ pounds, I would then stock Gshad.

If you mean Golden Shiners by 'GSH,' that's interesting.

If you could let a GSH population grow, unmolested by a predator, for a year or so, with pellet feeding, that could be interesting.

Yes, golden shiners. Why stock less than ideal forage if your sole purpose is to grow catfish? No fish wants to eat something with spines. BG and other evolved to have them for a reason...

I would say 3"-4" under good conditions.

CJ, it might be better than that. I'm seeing 3" GSH in ponds with no predators. (stock brooders this year, there's brooders and 3"-4" GSH next year without pellet feeding going on)

Keep a good phytoplankton bloom going. I shoot for 24"-36" visibility with a secchi disk.

I think you do a bit better on the growth too.

If you crushed the feed a bit, it would be a big boost also in the early stages.

You can also start by stocking 5" plus shiners in a few hundred pounds and get things going stronger.