Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Can a BG-LMB-CC 3/4 Acre Pond work?

The Channel cats wont hurt anything, dont get blue channels. If your gonna feed the pond they shouldnt bother anything till they get bigger, and by then you or someone would be takin some to eat. Just my observations on channels in the pond. Just dont put to many 3/4a pond 30 - 50 CC wont hurt nothing. Plus if there true channels they will eat some weeds and other green stuff.. everyone i cleaned had greenery in its belly and no fish. Now Blue channels whole differnt animal, they will wipe out your fish. Someplace on her there is a ID just dont remember where. After you know the differnce you can tell by looking at the mouth, but there is other ways like counting fin lines and another give away is a true channel has black spots on it when little. all the other stocking advice is all good and will drive you nuts but in a fun way.. G/L

esshup... here is a secret use chicken livers and if need be fish at night. (-:

In my opinion the HSB are great but there hard to keep, they die easy if caught and talk about eatin machines...there will tear your FHM up.. they eat small sunfish to, just my observations. to me its easier to manage the bluegills and feed them, and what ever else (CC) wants to eat the feed and then just keep any bass i catch that looks thin, after each spring and they spawn get some shiners and keep a few of the bigger bass. Seems to work just fine. I am just about out of CC so its time to stock some.

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.

I had very big CC and I found it easy to catch them. I fed my fish from my deck everyday and the CC were the first to show up and ate like hogs. I took a stout 5 ft piece of pvc pipe with a short 50 lb test trolling line tied to it and a bated treble hook on the line, and drop it infront of the CC I wanted. It looked like those guys on TV bringing tuna into a fishing boat.

Interesting idea John... Were you able to catch multiple fish at a time or did they spook for the day after catching one?

Here's the latest and greatest with our little project and what we've decided.....

We ended up stocking approximatley 800-900 BG/RES mix with 2K FHM. Went to the local co-op and bought some fingerling fish food for the BG...we're feeding them a couple of times a day already. Would like to use Aquamax 400, but we bought what was readily available.

Based on my personal messages with George and my conversation with Todd Overton, we will stock approximately 75 6-8" HSB in April or May if Overton has some in that size available. We will then stock approximately 30-50 each year thereafter depending on how many we harvest or lose. Since this will be a put and take pond, we will be able to dictate how big we want to allow the HSB to grow and how many we would like to harvest each year. We will feed the HSB Aquamax 600. At some point we may consider threadfin shad as an additional forage for the HSB.

Both George and Todd recommended that we leave out the cover in the pond for a couple of reasons. Both said it will help the HSB control the BG population and allow us to potentially grow some big BG. I thought it was funny that Todd said, "Yeah, leave out the cover because the HSB will run you all over the pond". I'm looking forward to that experience!

Special thanks to George for all the personal messages. Your advice and thoughts have been greatly appreciated!!!

CJB the first catch would scare all the fish but the next day they were all feeding again. The fish I think that is the smartest is the White Amur grass carp. When I tried to spear one, the GC would just disappear for the rest of the summer. The next year fewer would feed again, and again after trying to spear one they would not come back. It was like they could communicate that it was dangerous to feed. I actually speared two and both got away. Both times they were so heavy and strong they pulled the spear out of my hand and I later recovered the spear on the bottom of the pond. The winter kill finally did kill all but one of the 18 GC I had. I saw him early last spring but not since.

John, when I really need to kill a grass carp, I use a shotgun.

Dave I didn't want to shoot into the water but I had given up trying to spear them and was going the gun route the next spring, but the winter kill did it for me.

I had 2 monsters left in a pond that were really spooky. I tossed out a bunch of feed and walked off about 50 yards and used a 22 LR on one of them. Last years drought got the other one.

75 HSB are stocked and the Texas Hunter fish feeder is in operation! There is a huge difference in the way a HSB attacks the food versus the CNBG. They are fast and furious even at 6"! Now if we can just find a place to get our Aquamax at decent price close to Canton, TX we'll be in good shape.

Many thanks to Todd Overton. Great place, great guy.

AM is good, but if you can't find it and can find Silver Cup (There's one more brand that I can't think of - Greg Grimes sells it) it'll will work just fine.

If 20 miles works for you, Pott's at Emory will order Aquamax. If I remember correctly, Purina delivers to them on Thursdays. That's where I get mine.

You can't miss it, right on the corner of 19 and 69.

We had a local feed store right down the street order some for us. $34/bag! Very excited about that.

By the way, it's amazing how much you turn into a kid again when you fish. Even when you are only catching little CNBG and HSB that are max 4-6" right now! I could have spent hours doing it last weekend. I've never seen such fat little fish...I guess they are enjoying the buffet twice a day! Can't wait to watch them grow over the next month or two.

So did you decide against the CC for now?

No CC for now. We'll see how the pond evolves. Our intent is to add some more HSB in the fall in a different size. We have some CC in our very small pond in the front, but it has a slow leak....we'll see how that goes. Our bigger back pond is our priority.