Is there a good reason why a pond should be stocked with channel cat? The "standard" around here is bluegill, cats, and bass.

But we never fish for the channel cats. And recently we drained a lake -it had the aformentioned fish plus crappie and bullhead. Now that it has refilled its the only clear water pond on all the farms. So IF it was the bullheads and channels making the water cloudy, why should the pond be restocked with them?

If the water is too clear, you could end up with an aquatic vegetation problem.

IMHO if you don't want to have or fish for CC, don't restock them. The possible problem Shorty mentions could be handled by other methods, if it occurs.

Thanks. It would be nice to have a too clear problem. The ponds/lakes are all downstream of corn and bean fields - all no-tilled and properly terraced, but still...

Carefull what you wish for, you just might get it.

We spend $1000.00 a year on chemicals to treat the weeds, sechi disc readings range from 60" to 120" plus depending on the time of the year. The better the water clairty, the deeper and thicker the weeds will grow. Fish friendly herbicides are not cheap.

Note: I would rather see that money spent on Smallmouth, fish feeders, or something else to improve the pond. Right now it feels like pouring money down the drain.

Yep ! got my pond all cleared up so now I am having to control the algae, But I will take that over the WM and DW anyday.

Whether or not the bullheads and channel cats were the cause of your muddy water would depend on several factors such as size/depth/detail of the body of water, and the density of catfish.

If you don't care to fish for them or have them as a fish, I don't think there's any reason to stock them. They don't really serve any other purpose except being a mouth(s) to feed, or another type of fish to catch. In some ponds or lakes they may be an important part of the predator-prey relationship.

Shorty, I don't think you're saying to stock some channel cat just to create some less clear water, are you?

It "might" be a way to limit the weed growth in our pond to 3-4ft of water instead of 6-8ft of water. I did pose that question in the weed control section a couple of months ago but didn't get much of response on it as a viable and inexpensive way to limit the weeds. I don't know anyone who has tried it.

I think it would take a LOT of CC to muddy up water enough to affect weed growth - way over what I consider "normal recreational" CC stocking levels.

Theo, do you think 50 per acre would be too little? That would be 5 times what we currently have.

Shorty, I originally stocked 100 CC in 0.9 acre; I'm not sure exactly how many are there now, because there has been successful recruitment (unknown amount) to offset removals (known amount, I like to think). I estimate that I had 50+ CC of significant size (up to about 6 lbs) left last Fall. They have never caused muddy water (they do get their share of pelleted feed, and would not be disposed to bottom grubbing).

To make a guess, I think on the order of 500/acre might be needed to ensure muddiness. I could easily be wrong, but you can see why I think that's a lot of catfish.

Theo, that would be way more catfish bio-mass than I would want in our pond, but the goal is not to make it muddy, but to just stir the sediment up enough constanly to keep the light from reaching the depth greater than 3-4ft.

I don't consider catfish to be much of a problem when it comes to muddying up water. If they were starving, I guess they could.

OK, I like catfish as long as they are channels. I like to watch them feed on pellets and they are fun to catch. I originally stocked 125 in a one acre pond and am now down to about a dozen whoppers that I save for the Grandkids to catch. When they are gone, I'll restock with 12 inch ones.