Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations What was going on ??

Saturday morning walked up to my 2/3 acre pond and saw several fish scatter ,, got to looking and saw about 50 catfish mostly in 2 schools just hanging below the surface and a few scattered around the pond ,, sometimes some would surface like they were not getting enough air ,,catfish seemed to be the only fish that did this ,, plenty of minnows and bluegill acted fine .

Here are a few facts that could help

1 this pond had no fish till this year why we have no idea ]just purchased the land

2 stocked catfish ,, grass carp ,, fathead minnows ,, copper nose blue gill back in feb

3 water table varies from 5 inches to 8 foot

4 we just had a big rain that added about 4 inches fresh water
[ tropical dep bill]

5 about 20 percent of surface is watershield ,,, other parts has been treated all spring to keep it out

6 no chemicals can enter from rain run off

7 with in 2 hours fish were gone and none died ,,

Were the catfish schools consisting of fish a half of an in to an inch long?

If so, you likely had catfish reproduction. The catfish fry travel in tight schools near the shore with the male catfish nearby guarding them.

scary part catfish are 8 to 12 inches long we stocked 200 6 to 8 inches in feb and 16 catchable catfish [ 2 - 5 lbs ]and according to our net survey only fish in the pond before stocking were minnows

FWIW My CC school all day right now just below the surface near where I throw pellets every evening. Just a thought, did you stock pellet trained CC? Maybe they are waiting to be fed?

There was an article in PBM recently that talked about pellet trained LMB not being adept at competing and surviving in the wild. Maybe pellet trained CC need some time to figure out wild food?