While surfing the net I came across this post.
15 Nov 2007 06:37 PM
Originally posted by: rodrigo on 6/6/2005 7:14:00 AM
So I gill hooked a catfish on Friday and decided I'd eat him. I always enjoy opening a fish's stomach to see what they have been eating and this one blew me away. This was a fat little cat about 18" long and I suspected he'd been eating all of the little minnows which were swimming in this little pond. I was wrong. When I cut open the stomach all of this black gunk came out. When I was trying to clean off the cutting board it became clear that the gunk was algae. It's stomach was completely full.
For more background this is a small pond in the shape of a comma that is about 300 yards long from the tail to the big end and 60 yards across the big end. It's man made and fairly shallow. The fish that are caught from this pond are all stocked.
Does anyone know if algae is part of the normal diet of channel catfish? Additionally, another pond I fish has active feeding catfish that have hit poppers, which isn't normal in my book either, but some of these have had bellies filled with mud.
From and educated guess, I assume the mud could hold small crustaceans and larval insects, but if anyone can shed light on these, I'd appreciate it.
