I'm starting my pond soon, and in Iowa the DNR helps pond owners stock their new ponds. Their tried and true stocking suggestion in our region is largemouth, bluegills, and channel catfish. Most any other species in our area can either potentially be a problem (like crappies) or just a novelty that won't thrive (like walleyes or smallies). I really want to manage my pond for trophy LM and BG, and don't really care one way or the other about catfish. The DNR person I talked to didn't think catfish were a detriment or a benefit to the LM or BG until they reach large size. I will stock the pond with FH minnows, so my thinking was no cats means more minnows for the LM and larger BG. The flip side I suppose is that I'll have to serve as the predator for the bass, which will be hard for a C&R guy, but I suppose I can get over that for the bigger cause. What do all of you experts think on the issue of catfish or another 2nd predator for that matter?

Channel catfish can certainly get out of control, but I really like them in my pond. I do feel that they are heavy predators, which seems to keep my bluegill well under control. Long before I took ownership of the pond, somebody put black and white crappie in my pond. I think the channel cats help control the crappie also. It leads to really large bluegill and large crappie (I too, would not recommend crappie.)

I intentionally keep lots of small hungry bass in the pond. If I were trying to grow trophy bass I don't think I'd put the channel cats in, since I feel they compete pretty hard with the bass for forage.

Channel cats grow pretty fast. Last spring I put 22 channel cats into my half-acre pond. They were 12-14 inches and are now 18-20 inches. I recently took about six out. Most of this year group will need to be taken out next season, otherwise they will really take over and get far too large. I'll put a few more in next spring again.

Several years ago I had a large number of channel cats that were 24-36 inches. They really took over, and it was extremely hard to remove them. They dug big holes in the side of my pond. They could eat a couple of pounds of floating pellets in no time at all.

No matter what, channel cats are delicious, and they sure are fun to catch.

Good luck. Keep us informed.

Ken

EDIT(addition): As for catch and release -- just like in a garden full of carrots or onions, you will have to do some thinning, or you won't get any significant growth. A body of water can hold just a certain amount of biomass, which depends on water quality or artificial feeding.

That is a great analogy, Ken.

I was for CC stocked in large numbers for original pond stocking.

I was against them when they became hook shy and hard to catch and grew to be a nuicence at 12 - 14#s.

I was for them when numbers had been reduced and functioned as major predator helping conrol BG spawn that resulted in trophy BG.

I was for a lonely Mr. Whiskers that I spotted this week, survivor of a major fish kill last July.

I definitely think they have a place in a pond as long as stocking numbers are carefully considered.

hersh, a BG/LMB pond can be managed with or without CC. If a PM likes CC, he should certainly stock them in reasonable numbers; if a PM doesn't want CC, he doesn't need to include them in his plans.

Due to larger CC being easily obtained at a fiarly low cost commercially, they could be added later on in your pond if you didn't want to stock them at first. The same is not so true of several other species (such as the WE and SMB you mentioned, plus HSB), which are harder to come by (cheaply) in large sizes.

P.S. I have CC in my first pond and am glad, but I do not plan on ever stocking them in my second (or any future subsequent) pond(s).

If your goal is trophy LMB I would try to leave the CC out just to make things a little more simple. I have a few CC in my 2 acre pond. I would rather not have them there but I don't think they make a big difference. At greater numbers they will make a difference on forage. When I feed My BG the CC always show up and bully the feed area.

The bottom line with me is that they are not a fish I target for sport, I don't eat them, and they compete with all the sport fish for Oxygen, food and space. For my pond they were a bad choice. Not a terrible choice but probably not an optimal choice for my goal which is trophy LMB.

Oh... and once LMB get above 16 inches they will do a great job with helping you control the LMB population. you will still have to do a lot of "work" removing eneough LMB each year but the LMB will help.