Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Iowa stocking question...catfish or not?

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.