Joey, it's been my experience and many other members on here experience that CC become very hook shy and difficult to remove from a pond, even using any number of baits and at night. Perhaps you have a magic touch in catching them, but most don't find catching CC that are large and have been caught before overly easy or there wouldn't be so many posters complaining about way too many 5+ pound CC. Don't fool yourself, CC 16" and above become highly predacious and will greatly cut into the forage supply available for other species, particularly if they are not supplementally fed. They may not be quite the problem that blue cats are, but they still will cut heavily into the forage base of a pond.
Remember, a 3/4 acre pond can roughly support 75 pounds of predators. CC may not completely cut into that number, but they will take up some of it. If the original poster is going to remove 50 CC per year, then stocking that many is fine. However, as they start getting to the 1.5-2 pound range, that becomes a good number of CC meals. Most people won't eat that much catfish per year.
