Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Should begin to Harvest my Fish?

My pond is a little over 2 years old and is .63 acres in size.

The BG and CC were stocked 2 years ago and the bass about 1.5 years ago.

There are BG of all sizes up to 8". The bass spawned this year. The original bass are 11-13" and the baby bass are 5-8".

My question is should I began to harvest some of these fish or wait till Spring?

Two year old CC are just right to stink up a skillet.

You don't say how many bass you stocked but I think I would start trying to knock them back. Catching enough of them to make a difference is tough. By next Spring the spawning starts again.

Sorry, 300 BG and 90 Bass were stocked.

It's a pretty full pond.

I'd surely think you could start havesting middle-sized BG, too. I would want to wait until after next year's spawn before taking any LMB out, if not concentrating on large bass.

What are your management goals?

Theo, I usually agree to give the LMB a couple of years. However, he is starting with 90 and then had a successful spawn in .63 acres.

Of course, as you have pointed out, I don't know his goals. One of my flaws is that I think in the traditions of big, BIG, bass. Ok, I'll head for the corner and put on my pointy hat.

You go ahead to the corner, Guv.

In twenty minutes, we'll bring you a Peach DeKuyper Schnapps Flavored Popsicle.

I might start saying a lot more stupid things.

Remember the "I Love Lucy" episode where Ricky stuck a green light bulb in the bedroom lamp to try and convince Lucy she was turning green? She noticed everything looked green, and then blurted "I'm looking at the world through green-colored eyeballs!"

Well, I'm looking at the world through bream-colored eyeballs; you're looking at the world through bass-colored eyeballs.

In bream-light, 90 LMB in .63 acres is less dense than the 200 I stocked in 1 acre. I know they're way overcrowded from a bass-standpoint and I still couldn't bring myself to remove a skinny 16" LMB tonight that was probably 4 oz underweight - he's hungry and wants to thin my BG for me. Plus he eats pellets! I've got a serious (mental) problem.

We need to know what colored eyeballs scsims has.

I want the biggest bass that my pond can produce.

But I'm like alot of people I have a hard time wanting to keep bass.

Should I start keeping some of the 13" ones. If I do how many BG should I remove for each bass?

And what size BG should I remove?

I forgot to tell you all that it was porbably more like 80 bass because my pond was full of back swimmers and when I put the bass in and I saw serveral bass get eaten by those aggresive little insects.

"I want the biggest bass that my pond can produce."

With this goal in mind, here are my thoughts.

(1) Eliminate the CC. This gives your bass a full access pass to the buffet table.

(2) Start to cull some LMB. This gives your larger bass a full access pass to the buffet table.

Since the focus for my pond(s) is not on lmb, I do not have Bob's book on raising trophy bass. For the folks that do, what are the recommendations stated in the book?

If after big bass, follow DD & Russ' advice. I heartily endorse reducing the competition from CC.

If the goal is BIG bass in a .63 acre pond, I would eliminate all but about 15 LMB. Get rid of the CC and don't mess with the BG unless their numbers become a problem.

It is going to be tough to eliminate that many bass. They get hook shy.

That will be very very tough. Thanks, what about if I changed my goal to overall good fishery?

Then , if you keep things in balance, you would have more med. sized BG and LMB with a few big ones and more small ones.

Exactly! But, maintaining the balance will still take work. However, it won't seem as much like an exercise in futility.

I have been thinking maybe I better cull out a few of those CC, since there pushing 4 pounds is less then 1 year. I was thinking they must be eating food other fish could eat (bass and BG) so i decided to take one today. A interesting find, the fish has nothing in its belly except fish feed, so I dont think it was eating much anything else. It weighed 3 pounds 6 oz and was 19 inches long. A fat healthy fish.

I have 2 questions.
1. is there some trick to cleaning catfish because I had a heck of a time. All these years and I never once cleaned a cat. I managed one fillet pretty good but the fist one.. oh boy.

2. The meat has a red irridescent look to it. It was under a flo light. Looks real nice is this typical of CC a irridescents to it?

The hard part to cleaning a catfish is skinning it. This is greatly expedited by the use of a hammer, nail (double-headed form nail works very well), a 2"x4" board about 3 feet long, and a pair of pliers.

-Nail the CC to the board thru the head
-Cut thru the back spines on the dorsal fin, then break the big front spine of with the pliers
-Make an incision down each side of the CC, starting in the meat behind the head and following the meat down each side most of the way to the belly
-Pull the skin off the CC with the pliers, front to back. Hard for me to get it off in less than 4-5 pieces, but the board the CC is nailed to lets you brace the fish against your leg.
-Once the skin is off, the CC can be filleted similar to a BG or LMB (I find the CC much easier to fillet, except for the skinning, as there are no secondary "shortribs" like Centrarchids have, and the bones are thick enough that the knife easily follows them instead of cutting thru them)
-The belly meat, which becomes a decent sized piece of meat in CC over 3 or 4 pounds, may be included on the fillets or cut off as desired. My family doesn't really like CC belly meat, but some PMs here think it's the best part. It is firmer/tougher than the tail meat.

The more traditional variation of skinning involves nailing the head of the CC to a tree.

After rinsing the fillets, I like to soak them in water for about a day to help get the blood out. Filleting works well for CC up to about 6 pounds; heavier than that the fillets have enough thickness variation from front to back that even cooking is a little more difficult. My Grandpa used to cut really big CC into steaks, similar in shape to salmon steaks, but I haven't played around with this yet. Maybe next year with bigger CC.

I've never looked at a CC under flo(rescent ?) light.

P.S. I'm sure there are other good methods of cleaning CC, which we will hopefully hear about.

Thanks Theo,

I will try what you suggested. After seeing only pellets in the fishes belly I am not going to harvest anymore and let them go one more year. These 4 pounders are a blast on light tackle. next year I will take most of them. 16 at 5 pounds is a good sum twards my total carring capacity... I dont want to use it all up in catfish...

Theo
Why do you skin it if you are filleting the CC? I just start filleting from the head back and once I get down to the tail(do not cut thru the tail) I flip the fillet over and lay the knife flat at the tail and run it along the skin.....it comes off so nice and clean.

I always hated the skinning part of cleaning until my Grandpa showed me this way. Try it....it takes about 2 minutes per side to get fillets.

BarO,

This is what I tryed to do after butchering the fillet but I kept cutting the skin and I couldnt restart it. If you know what I mean. By the time I got done it wasnt very pretty. Maybe I need a shrper knife or something... Because I have no problem with Sunfish or bass. Maybe after a few it will be easyer but this poor fish was butchered.. hehehe

Try a flexible & sharp fillet knife.....it will work great with a little practice.
Good luck

Joey,

Here's an old thread on skinning/filleting cats.

http://www.pondboss.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=19;t=000002#000004

Joey, it doesn't work for me, either. I have to skin it and then use an electric knife to cut off the sides. Like you, I have no problem with LMB.

Try this
Have an ice chest full of ice add a little water and immediately put fresh caught cat in it. Let chill a couple hours. I purchased:
http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templa...ll&N=4887&Nty=1
The first order of business with the knife is to run it over some plywood to dull blades. Once this is done the skinning process is much easier. It doesn't take a sharp knife to filet and skin cats! With a little practice it's a 45 sec. per fish process. Cats are hard to skin fresh, much easier when chilled with a dull knife. Learned this from a Canadian boat captain in Costa Rica. Observed him take a new knife out of package and "dull the blades" for a full minute before proceeding to clean 9 tuna and 30+ chicken dolphin. We all went to a "Soda" and they grilled with onions, bananas, fresh pineapple and served with black beans and rice. We fed 3-4 families at the 'feast'!

edit
After the initial filet is made, flip it over and keep knife almost parallel to table and pull skin gently to knife.