I am out of the county ritht now, but last week my dad told me that I have several clouds of something dark floating around the pond. I just got off the phone with him and now he saw couple of 1.5" dead catfish.
The pond is 3/4 ac with the dreaded chocolate milk color from suspended clay. I don't want to clear it because I am planning to have a track hoe enlarge it this summer and it would just be a waist of money right now. The pond was made and stocked couple of years ago with bluegill, fatheads, channel and blue catfish. This year I added 3-4" hybrid stripers and black crappie. My objective is to manage it for crappie and hybrid stripers. (will stock LMB if crappie overpopulate) Both are probably too small and too low in numbers right now to make a dint in these catfish. I have two questions. Given the water clarity, how can I check if my bluegill spawned? If I just increase the amount of feed and maybe add aerator to take care of the extra "nutrients", is there any other adverse effect of having bunch of extra catfish? I am planning to start heavy harvest this year.
BTW, the snakes also had lot of young this year.
