Can't help you on number of fatheads. I put stacks of pallets in the shallow parts and weighed them down with cinder blocks to help reproduction. Pieces of 2-4" PVC pipe, split long way, stuck in the mud with the open part facing the pond help egg laying also.
As for the mudcats, every one I catch stays out, but that only makes a small dint. They stopped biting on dough, but now they like cut bait off the bottom. In my opinion, the best time to do anything to control them is in the spring. Their offspring slowly travels around the pond on the surface in schools of hundreds of little cats. At first they have no fear of humans and you can easily saine out the whole bunch from a boat. I am getting ready for this, but I only have a 2/3 ac pond. If you get much over 1-2 ac, I would say that this method it is pretty much hopeless. I also constructed couple of "traps". Two, six foot long pieces of 4" pipe with a cap and bunch of holes drilled on one end. I only made this couple of wks ago and so far only cought two catfish. My friends grandfather did this for a living in Louisiana, but he used 8-10" tin pipe. (He put his hand over the end so the eals and snakes could escape through his fingers, but the catfish stayed in). Seeing how this worked, I have high hopes for the trashcan catfish traps described on other threads here. I can't stand these things because of what they are doing to my pond, but they are pretty good to eat.
