Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Structure for catfish

Getting your catfish to spawn is kind of a paradox. If you have no other predators in the pond, it's easy - very easy to end up with way too many catfish. With BG and LMB present like you have, you can still get them to spawn, but baby CC are so slow and come so late in the year (75 - 85 deg F water temp for spawning) that EVERYTHING else eats them and very few live to grow out of the fry/fingerling stage.

So - you give it your best shot and see if any sizable younger catfish show up.

Two tips for CC spawning: 1) The cavities you provide have to be sized for the cats you have (bigger catfish use bigger cavities, I guess to have room to move around in). 2) Best results are supposed to occur when the cavities are placed in the pond shortly (couple of weeks?) before the cats spawn (to give less time for some other fish to take up residence?) There are a LOT of publications on CC online due to their extensive use in commercial aquaculture.

Good Luck. I had a few containers in last year with no results, I have more this year. I'm not too worried about success, more interested in having the cats convert fish food into fry for the other fish to eat. And I'm interested to see what happens.