Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Catfish important....

NormKopecky, Zach, Newbee and other who like and are raising trophy catfish....

I have just been throgh the long and difficult process of building my lake from scratch..it is 9.3 acres to be exact and 30 feet deep. I think, from reading previous post, you all love catfish as much as I do, and might be the reason why you all built your lakes.
First How are your Blues doing?
How big are they?
Have you had any survival problems?
Most importantly...where did you get your fish???

From talking with most of the suppliers out in Texas, there seems to be several different strains of this fish. This might explain the problems some of us have with "catch and release" and their over all "hardiness" compared to channels.
Newbee, I believe you ran into such bad luck with your blues. Are you still haveing this problem?
One supplier openly had said their blues are little more delicate than their channels. But another said the opposite! he claims his blues are more hardier than his channels. Two others said they have had no problems with their fish at all.

Like I said guys, if you could take some time on this post, it would really be a favor to me on figuring out the absolute best way to start my lake off in the right direction....

thank you

Anyone???

W. Robinson

E_mail: r_boulware@hotmail.com

be glad to help...

Well Big_Pond, the cats are doing well and seemed to have leveled off in their growth. I have all different sizes, which I think is good and the record holds at around 8 lbs.. I have not been fishing lately, because of the heat and the cats have not been eating as much, so I think I'll wait for the fall to catch me a mess of them.

It is still my opinion that blue cats are less hardy then the channels and to tell you the truth they haven't grown that much more then the channels. Just my opinion, not an expert.

newbee,!! you have picked up a quit a few stars under your rateing, maybe change your name from newbee to expert!!! I have not seen you for a while....

Important question....from whom did you get your blues from?

I don't have any Blues, but I do have around 50 channels (2 are albino) and 4-6 flatheads. Our cats are doing wel, they are from 5-7 years old and range from 6 lbs to over 14 lbs. Here's about a 10 lb'r I caught last weekend on a rooster tail on 2 lb spider line with my micro lite rig.

http://f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bandtrichardson@sbcglobal.net/detail?.dir=/de74&.dnm=bca8.jpg

Where are you guys?? I need this one..

Big_Pond, I do indeed love catfish. Growing up in Nebraska, we fished for catfish and not bass which I'd never even heard of.

I'd never put flathead catfish in a small lake like ours as they would eat everything. We have a single blue catfish and the rest are channel catfish. One lb. catfish are so cheap that that's all that I've put into the lake starting in 2000. Some of these fish are reaching 10 lbs. now and I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

Our lake is used for elderly, handicapped and kids fishing. This means I want lots of fair sized fish and only a few "WOW" fish. The "WOW" fish will safely live out their lives here. Unfortunately, many of the catfish are getting too big for our fishing equipment. We're not managing for large fish of any kind (except maybe panfish). Except for a few "WOW" fish, we will probably remove catfish over 20-21 inches long.

We are feeding Aquamax 600 and the catfish are really growing.