Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Adding Channel Cats??

I've got the task of being in charge of our neighborhood lake, and we've had numerous residents ask us about stocking channel cats in the lake. Y'all have always given me great advice, so I'm hoping to get some great words of wisdom.

The lake is about 100 acres, with bass (some over 10lb), small amounts of crappie, bluegil/redears, and we added 7 loads of threadfins last year. We have a few bullheads that have been caught, but not many.

The bass are a little undersized, with most being 80-85% relative weight. We have started sinking christmas trees for added cover, and have placed close to 400 over the last 3 years.

My concern is that they would compete with bass for food, and the bass are already struggling, and that it would cost a fortune to create a decent population in the lake. What kind of stocking rate would you need? One of the guys wanting to do it talked with a fish truck guy, and he said you could add a couple of thousand 3-5" a year till they became established?

Is that feasible?

90% of the people fishing fish for bass, so I'd hate to hurt them as we have been working to improve their population.

Will bass eat the small catfish?

Thanks for any info!

CC are predators so I do not see how they could not compete with LMB, but others can certainly speak more authoritatively than me.

I agree with RAH im no expert but I believe at about 15" or so catfish become an aggressive predator that will feed on the same forage as your bass. When they grow to that size they will be another strain on your forage base.

I think there is a good chance that they would get eaten by the bass in a short time.

Thanks for the info. I going let everyone know that it is not a good idea to add them.

I totally disagree with the advise you have been given. In East Texas, you can purchase 7" CC for $0.75 a piece. It would take an 8 lb. LMB to eat a 7' CC. In a lake with adequate forage (which I don't think you have), that 7 " CC could grow to 16" and over 2 lbs within a year. At that point, there is nothing in the lake that could eat it and stop it from eventually growing to 40 lbs.

I see no issue with stocking a few hundred as a bonus fish.

No matter what, you have have to take care of the overall food chain, so those efforts never stop, and a few hundred channel cats over 100 acres shouldn't be too much of a drag, IMO.

The advice given was for a lake with hardly any forage for the bass. Get enough forage then look at adding catfish. One step at a time

+1 IMHO yes the larger CC will compete with LMB for the forage but it would be insignificant if the CC numbers are limited. The 10% of the folks that own property should have a voice. IMO your bass fisherman will not even know they are there unless they are lucky enough to have a 10 pounder hit their bass lure someday and have a great fight on their hands! CC are not like FHC. They don't have the gigantic mouth gap.

I agree with the advice that was given to wowens1604, that's why I didn't chime in earlier.

I disagree on the size of LMB needed to eat a 7" CC. If a 20" LMB (that weighed 5# and had a RW of 116) can eat a 7" BG, why would the LMB have to be 24" long and weigh 8# to eat a 7" CC? Plus like others have said, you have the added pressure on the forage base (in a years time) once the CC have grown to 16"-18"+ in length like you said (which is true in my observations). In this particular lake, the LMB are overcrowded and don't have enough to eat (as shown by the low RW of the LMB caught). If the goal was to grow large CC, then by all means add them, but it sounds like the goals for this lake is to increase the angling opportunities for quality LMB in the lake since 90% of the anglers are fishing for LMB.

Guess I was thinking of it a different way. If the CC can help take out some of the small LMB is that a bad thing? BTW FWIW I also disagree it would take an 8 lb LMB to take out a 7 inch CC.

In my dealings with HOA lakes, just because 90% of the people fish for LMB, and the question was asked about adding CC, that doesn't mean that the remaining 10% of the people fish for CC. It could be just one person that is vocal and wants to have CC in the lake to fish for.

If I was advising the HOA on managing the 100 ac lake, I would point out the forage base problem, and just say that the CC issue could be revisited once the forage base was brought back up to par.

What is unknown is the stocking budget and annual budget for the lake. If CC were stocked, and they became a problem, is there room in the budget to hire a commercial fisherman to concentrate solely on the lake for a month or two with fyke/hoop nets to reduce the CC population?

If the LMB are low on RW, then to me that means that they are hungry. In a 100 acre lake, how many CC would have to be stocked to avoid predation AND to provide a high enough population to provide sufficient angling opportunities? They will start competing with the LMB in a year for food. How many will be taken out of the lake annually, and how many will reproduce in the lake?

If there was another small BOW in the HOA that doesn't connect to the 100 ac lake, even in a high water event, I would suggest stocking CC there making that a CC BOW. BUT before that would happen I would recommend that explicit rules written into the HOA bylaws that if anyone was caught bucket stocking CC into the big lake, that there would be SEVERE $$ consequences.

I've noticed that the fish don't listen to me very well when I tell them that they can only eat one species of fish......

Scratching my head thru this one and I probably have something wrong, happens a lot to me! Facts as I have them. We have a 100 acre lake with too many underweight LMB and not enough forage. Approach taken is to increase the forage. There are no predators in the lake that can eat a 3 inch or larger LMB other than another LMB. The current population of LMB are surviving at the current lake balance but not thriving. As the LMB are skinny and over populating is it possible adding more forage, without adding an LMB predator or removing LMB, will reduce the cannibalism of the LMB and just make even more LMB that are skinny? I submit the hypothesis that adding CC, whose mouth gap is more suited to a LMB than a BG of equivalent length, could actually improve the bass fishing.

Not if they are eating BGs

Remove bass and increase the forage till you see an improvement on weights

Agree. My hypothesis is adding CC, whose mouth gap is more suited to a LMB than a BG of equivalent length, could actually improve the bass fishing. I am wondering if the CC won't prefer the LMB cause, dang it, they are just easier to get in the mouth and swallow than one of those tall BG!

Has anyone mentioned adding TFS and GSH also along with BGs?
100ac is a big BOW to be out of balance that bad

Bill they prob would love to eat LMB but those fellers are pretty quick. I'm not sure a catfish can catch many bass

Here's one we can agree to disagree on my friend. IMO catfish are the smartest fish in any puddle. Don't underestimate them. Ever wonder why people say if you stock FHC they will remove all fish from the pond? I'm guessing cause they can catch them some way or other. Hey, BG are pretty fast too!

I'm with Bill D on this. It dang sure doesn't take an 8 lb bass to eat a 7 inch CC. I recently caught a 2.5 lb bass on a 5 to 6 inch GSF. It was at FIH's pond. And a GSF isn't near as fusiform as a 6 to 7 inch CC.

Quote wowens1604 from 2013: " We had a shock survey done, a couple of years ago, and it was worth the money. We are going to do it again either this fall, or next spring.

Our goal is to pull out 2000lbs of small bass a year out of the lake, but it just doesn't happen. Only a handful of people keep the small ones. We have problems with non residents fishing, and you find them with 5lb bass in a bucket."


So some LMB are removed, just not enough. adding forage, cover and starting a feeding program helps. CC will key in on the pellets that are feeding the BG, which indirectly are feeding the LMB.

It'd be nice to know the RW of the LMB back in 2013 and how they compare to the LMB RW today.

Thanks for all the replies and advice. To answer a couple of questions.

We did add 5 loads of Threadfins last spring. They seem to be going great, and the bass seem to like them.

Over the last 4 years our relative weight has gone down about 4-5% based on the shock surveys done. One thing that Greg Grimes guy told us that makes us feel a little better is the first survey was done in the fall, and the next one was done post spawn so he said the drop was not that bad.

We have been adding structure to try to help the bluegill population. We've added close to 400 Christmas trees over the last 4 years.

We only have one feeder, and we use it to keep a lot of bluegill around the dock so the kids can watch the fish, and catch them.

Adding the dock a couple of years ago, and getting the fishermen together for things like sinking the trees, and a couple of tournaments has really gotten the lake Mose usage, and now the HOA is more open to spending money on the lake, but we really spend very little on it for its size. I've been getting about $5000 a year for fish the last couple of years. Prior to that nothing had been spent on management for about ten years.

We do have some large bass in the lake. There are numerous 8-10 lb bass caught each year, and we've seen one that was 28 inches, but the guy did not have a scale.

I think if we added 6-7" cc many of them would be eaten.

The added cover will also help the LMB too. They will use the added cover to ambush BG and not have to swim as far for their meals.