Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Stocking CC in existing pond.

I just want some clarification please. I have posted before about a pond I occasionally fish and very slightly manage. It ranges from 8/10 to 1 acre depending on wonderful mother nature. Has lots of Green Sunfish and very little else now. I ordered 200 6-9 in. CC from Jones Fish Farm to put in this pond. I might feed very lightly but really just want them to do their own thing in there. I plan to catch and harvest 30-50 this fall and continue to enjoy them periodocally over the next few years. Is this number to high for a pond that has alot of small sunfish already, or will the CC gorge on all those small sunfish?

Once the CC get over 3# they turn to eating fish. It's not a magic number, and they probably will eat the GSF before reaching that size, it all depends on other food sources in the pond and if the GSF are small enough for them to eat.

I think it sounds like a great plan.
You might be a little cat heavy the first year, but if you put pretty substantial pressure on them as you plan, might work out well and give you a nice, low hassle low cost catfish spot.
As you probably know from other catfish threads, do not give into the temptation to catch and release any of the cats-they can get really smart and be very hard to remove later.

There are tons of small green sunfish in there. I catch most of them in the 2-4 inch range. I understand that they wont eat them right away but maybe by next year. I will not release any that I catch. I dont plan on fishing for them until fall so anything that we catch is hitting the hot grease.

Good plan!

I just wanted to clarify something else. Is 200 to many CC as far as carrying capacity goes for this pond? There is some other fish in there, but we just dont really know what.

I think 200 is too many but it might work. You can easily restock them. Those CC will start eating GSF as soon as they hit the water. It will take awhile for them to control them.

If you drop back the # of CC to slightly over 100 fish, and stock the 6"-9" size, you could be pulling out 16"-18" fish by late summer if you feed 'em. Stocking 105 fish of that size will get you over the minimum and you won't be charged for delivery. Plus stocking the larger CC will minimize predation if there are LMB in the pond. Depending on how many you want to harvest, you could restock another 105 next year, or wait 2 years.

I too agree that 200 is an awful lot of channel cats in that size pond. They can easily get out of control. They become very hook shy and smart in a very short period of time.

I have a real love/hate relationship with channel cats. They are very hardy. They grow really fast. They are delicious. But, once they get to about 24 inches, and have been caught once or twice, they become extremely difficult to remove from a pond.

I don't plan to put them in my main pond again. It doesn't take long before they are 24-36 inches, and they become the very top predators in a pond. As they get larger, they can also do a lot of destruction to a pond by digging caves in the sides and banks of a pond.

From now on, they will only go into smaller "put-and-take" pond that I can drain and seine. I put in about 25 each year, which provides us with about 35-50 lbs. of fillets each year.

Being where you are, think about trout next winter. They can really eat a lot of year-of-young and fingerlings. Also, think about adding a number of largemouth bass. They too can really do some damage to a large population of small sunfish.

Short update on this pond. I never got to fish much last year because of a heavy workload but I have fished several times this year. I am still burdened with the small green sunfish but the catfish are doing great. I have caught 15 so far and they are anywhere from 1 to 2 lbs. I have been throwing out a few lbs. of feed once a week when I am there and they are like little vacuums sucking up the pellets. Next week I have a chance to fish our local reservoir and they want all bass removed that are caught. I plan to take as many as I can and put them in the pond to help eat the sunfish also. I hope to catch at least 15 but I am aiming for 25. I also bought some cutrine plus and sprayed about 50 feet of shorline for filamentous algae. I hope it works.