Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking managing bullheads

I have a pond in the planning stages it will be around 10 surface acres when completed. My question is I know I will get bullheads from upstream. A beaver has it damed up right now and over the years I have seen it bone dry a couple times , after a few good rains I get bullheads. So if I start out stoking forage fish I am afraid the bullheads will take over. The only thing I can think of is stock adult LMB the second year in hopes they will control the bullheads. Any ideas?

If you keep numerous LMB of various sizes in the pond they should keep the bullheads from overpopulating and the ones you catch should be eating sizes. Bullheads 10"-12" are as good eating as CC in my opinion. Bullheads will learn to eat fish pellets so they should grow rapidly in 3-4 yrs for nice sized fish to harvest. I grew bullheads in a cage from 3.5"-5" to 10"-10.5" long in 2 years.

A HUGE ++1 from me on that. I love them! IMO I would not have a heart attack or nuke my pond if I found I had some. I would just put a fire under the grease to get it hot and ready!

you will get them from upstream?? From down stream if you have enough drop fish can't get up. Can you stock bass in source upstream too??

IME without LMB I am having a real tough time controlling BH in wetland type ponds. I have tried trapping and netting but can't seem to stay ahead of them. I've hit them with Rotenone and started over. They always return. The LMB to seem to work for me.

Bullheads are considered an absolute delicacy in parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

Several years ago a few PB friends gathered at Sunil's pond to harvest at least150 pounds of them. We had a lot of fun doing it. I brought a few of them home.



They were a hefty bunch, averaging somewhere between 1.5 to 2.5 lbs.





The fillets provided the main attraction for a Father's Day party and a 4th of July party. Each party was attended by about 40 friends and relatives, and nobody went home hungry.

I'd rather that they don't invade my ponds, but if they do -- I'd just catch them, invite some friends to a party, and eat those tasty fish.

We will have something to look forward to. Because they got off a spawn last year and we have a bunch of them in our old pond.

We ate a few last year and while I would not call them a delicacy, they were very good.

Will pour the feed to them and make them fat and tasty. They sure like to eat. Caught a few small ones (6" from last years spawn)in the last few days when we went down to feed. They like their feed. Their bellies were so fat they looked like they could pop.

Decided to quit trapping them and the GSF and just embrace what we have. From what I have read, after introducing adult LMB (put in a half dozen 12"ers last year) and adult BG both BH and GSF species will over time go into decline as the existing stock get fished out.

Looking forward to raising some 2 pounder BH's.

From what I understand BH are true 'bottom feeders', with a diet consisting of insects and invertebrates mostly, where CC and especially BC are more piscivorous as they get larger, is that correct?

"From what I understand BH are true 'bottom feeders', with a diet consisting of insects and invertebrates mostly, where CC and especially BC are more piscivorous as they get larger, is that correct?"
This is a pretty good generalization, although I think common carp and suckers are more true bottom feeders than bullheads. Note that bullheads have a relatively large mouth. I think bullheads especially larger ones also eat small fish, weak, sick, and healthy ones. Bullheads, CC, and Blue Catfish probably eat very similar food items when they are all the same size.

If you are truly interested in bullheads and catfish you should get the Mar-Apr 2012 back issue of PBoss magazine where it had several articles about catfishes. One of the articles was titled:
CHANNEL CATFISH: PICKY TEENAGERS OR OPPORTUNISTIC GENERALISTS. Tanner Stevens & Dr.Brian Graeb look in depth at diets of channel catfish. Discuss competition factor with bluegills.
In this article they say- "channel catfish begin feeding on zooplankton and aquatic insect larvae until they reach 12" with maximum prey sizes increasing as they grow." This is true for many sport fish. They go on to say- "Beginning at around 12" CC start incorporating fish into their diet. The proportion of fish prey gradually increases as they grow." Seasonal and regional differences in diet of catfish have been reported.

Thanks for all the response's.
I cant stock bass upstream as it is off my property I would think I will probably get bass too. it is on a wet weather creek and when we get big rains it has numerous ponds running off into it. I think I will just have to stock LMB right away instead of waiting for my forage fish to multiply then just try and harvest the bullheads.
After being bone dry during the drought a beaver moved in and made a shallow area that now covers 3 acres or so. I put some shiners and FHM in there 2 years ago. last year I could cast net shiners and small BG fairly easy. This month I finally caught 6 big shiners and one small BG with a cast net so I threw out a few minnow and BG traps. When I picked them up the next day minnow traps were empty and the BG traps were stuffed with bullheads. I am assuming I had bullheads last year and they got big enough to eat shiners and grew up.

Dale says"I think I will just have to stock LMB right away instead of waiting for my forage fish to multiply then just try and harvest the bullheads."

I agree. If it were my pond and since you already have bullheads I would try to find some fish farm with larger bass of 5"-8". Get them stocked soon before the bullheads spawn. This way the bass will help a lot to control this year's new crop of bullheads. Then in the next few years, work to remove the current resident population of several sizes of bullheads. Bullheads enter baited fish traps pretty well. Build yourself one or two larger fish traps. So a conscious effort to trap and fish for bullheads will help a lot to thin the BH. If you don't have a bass spawn this spring, then also stock some fingerling bass now or this fall. This provides several year class of bass to prey on various sizes of BH. With pellet feeding you can have a pretty good general fishing and fish food pond with bass, BH and a panfish such as RES or HBG. RES and or HBG (4"-6" or 3"-5") could be stocked anytime this year.

One style of larger fish trap. Various sizes can be made. Other styles are also good to use.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=21794&page=2

To date at least, I have caught a lot more of my CC by casting and retrieving curly tail jigs and small crank baits that I have actually fishing for them on the bottom with catfish bait. Mine are probably in the 16-18" range.

That kind of tells me they were chasing live things to eat.

I do also observe them feeding on the bottom. When I hand feed around the perimeter of the pond, the feed is usually mixed floating and sinking. If I wait about five minutes and hold real still, eventually the CC will eat the further out feed and work their way up the bank to where I can see them.

All my fish must be getting enough to eat. Water temperature 60 degrees and we are having a heck of a time catching any. One or two here and there, but not exactly exciting. Yet when we feed see lots of 3-6" BG and an occasional larger one, and the CC as I described.

The BH in our old pond are chow hounds. You can see them hitting the floating feed on the top of the water and I am sure they are also eating the sinking feed. When we catch one while they are feeding they will be stuffed to the gills with feed.

When we did that bullhead eradication get-together, mentioned by catmandoo, their guts were filled with filamentous algae.

It made us think they were trying to eat something that was in the FA, and just ingested a ton of it during the process.

When I fish with live minnows or shiners, I will catch bullheads.

So, they eat a lot of different things.

Cody Note: FA generally has myriads of small invertebrates mixed in with it - most of them microscopic - protozoa to insect larvae. With all the animal life in FA there is likely nutrition in and amongst it.

Good eating? Are they hard to filet or prepare? I recall the neighbor who bucket stocked my pond with a bucket full of mystery fish last fall. The only thing he admitted to having in the bucket was a bullhead.

If the bullhead can be helpful, and eat FA in the process of chasing other prey I'm happy to leave him there. That is as long as there is only 1 or I can control the numbers.

I think bullheads taste better than CC. The trick is growing them to a decent size. If properly managed, 12"-16" bullheads are easily obtained and are a perfect size for eating.

So your neighbor is Old Mudcat Joe. No doubt he was giggling uncontrollably behind a tree after he put some in your pond.

All bullhead caught in my pond are chucked onto the shore.

I'm really disappointed, Sunil. Throwing them up on the bank seems like such a waste.

I'd have thought you'd be taking the "green" route and put them in the outhouse, for the snapping turtle.

I have a hard time getting past the white grubs and around here most BH have them. I have not ate one for 20 years. Maybe I can try and single sex some and put them in my RES pond. Hehe

I just skin them and fry them on the bone. I prefer them that way. I do smaller CC the same way. If you don't have a secret breading recipe of yer own, all the grocery stores sell them. They all seem to be OK from a taste standpoint. I like ones with cornmeal as a base.

Well I went out and tried stink bait and crawdads for a couple hours , didn't catch anything. My fish trap had about a dozen baited with AM 500. think I will try to build one like Bill Cody attached. I got mine from Cabelas although the are cheap they tear up easily.

IMHO You want to catch them just stick a 1 inch hunk of crawler on a hook and toss it out. If they are in there, you will catch them. I fish a lake in Indiana that has both a lot of CC and a lot of BH. I use G&S stinkbait when I want to catch CC only. Never caught a BH on it. Throw a crawler and you can catch both.

we stocked a pond at goose ranch last fall with 1000 lbs of bullheads ranging in size from 1/4- 3/4 lb... during ice fishing, they were super active about 1 day per week all thru the water column and nonexistant the other 6 days of the week.

i love bullheads!

Freak.

I may have worded it a little đifferentky, but I agree. Now how does one tell the males from females and what can we do to improve BH reproduction habitat?

Oh, so much to answer.

This goes back to the great bullhead roundup at Sunil's.

Sunil may have a better memory than me, but I believe we took out about 85 bullheads. We also took out a number of yellow perch.
Some of the bullheads and all of the perch were dinner that evening.

Sunil brought a bucket full of minnows. I think they were fatheads. I brought a bunch of worms from my worm pits. Some were the offspring of Texas Jumpers from DD1. The others were standard redworms. I'd say that we probably caught about an equal number of bullheads and perch on minnows vs. worms.

As Sunil mentioned above, it was very interesting that the bullhead guts were filled with filamentous algae.

During that roundup, I don't believe we wasted any fish. Although an unnamed WV bald-headed esquire did bully some of them with his boots.

They are very easy to clean and fillet. There are several different methods. Everybody has their "best method." My favorite is to use an electric knife, starting at the tail, and following the backbone through the ribs, to the back of the gills. After I get a pile of fillets, I use a regular fillet knife to cut out the rib cages and then I use that same knife to slip the skin off. It averages about a minute to do a 12-16 inch catfish with this method.

I soak all fillets in a salt brine to remove any blood left in the fillets. I don't have a magic formula for salt per the amount of water and the amount of fish in that water. But, probably about a tablespoon of Kosher salt per pound of fish, and enough water to cover the fillets. I let them soak at least two hours, and I mix the water and fillets several times.