Mark B/Salmonid,
I may not be the ultimate expert, but I've been there, and I have a little bit of experience with these issues going back at least 50 years.
First, are you sure they are Channel Cats? Based on what you've posted, I'm concerned that you may have bullheads. Eradication of the two is significantly different.
Channel Cats are both good and bad. They grow fast. They are a lot of fun to outsmart as you try to catch them. They are one of the best tasting freshwater fish you can find.
Bullheads are pretty tasty too. Their memories are much shorter, thus they are easier to catch. They are smaller. Unfortunately, they are not quite as tasty as CC, without a lot of work at cleaning time. I think I have a post somewhere, which I could find if necessary, on great tasting bullhead preparation for a neighborhood gathering.
As for a 75 foot seine -- I wouldn't want to be on either end of that thing. In the last 50 years I've pulled a lot of 4- to 5-foot high seines, in widths from about 4-foot to 100-foot. Once you start getting beyond 25 feet, it takes a little bit of experience to pull it without loosing a lot of the catch. At 40 foot, it becomes even more difficult to not loose the catch. At 65 foot, it almost needs the pull of Jesse Ventura and the Incredible Hulk, but they need to have the finesse of keeping the bottom and top of the seine where it needs to be, and they need to be strong enough, plus knowing what it feels like to harvest it properly into a tub or tank.
Back to the Channel Catfish vs. Bullheads. Can you post some photos?
Bullheads are fairly easy to catch with worms or minnows. Several Pond Boss friends and I removed over eighty 12-14 inch fat bullheads out of Sunil's pond earlier this year.
Channel Cats are a lot more wary. I currently have 10 to 15 CC, between about 24 and 36 inches, in a 3/4 acre pond that need to get pulled out. I've pulled out about five in the last five weeks. They are depriving my trophy bluegill and smaller catfish out of evening dinners.
I'm able to pull out about one or two per week, using 6-10 inch creek chubs on #4-#6 circle hooks, on 24# line hooked to the shore. Even then, a number have gotten loose. I don't know what it will take to catch them.
I've been here before, and it does eventually correct itself. The last correction was due to a "turnover" that killed a number of 24-36 inch channel cats while we were at a Pond Boss Conference in Arlington, TX a number of years ago.
It sounds like you really need to add predators, and then a lot more forage to your pond. You need some aggressive predators. Large Mouth Bass are usually what we suggest as predators. But there are other alternatives that I will leave to others to suggest. If successful, you will need to add forage for your predators. Again, we usually suggest bluegill, but there are also a lot of alternatives.
Regards,
Ken
