Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations dying blue cats

I have recently stocked my pond with a combination of channel cats and blue cats. The weird thing is that a great number of the blue cats have died. My friend got fish the same day from the same hatchery and he has been experiencing the same thing. Are the blue cats just not as hardy as the channels or was there a problem at the hatchery. As my sign in name sugests I am new to this pond thing and would really appreciate any input.

I have had both channel cat and blue cat and I think that channel cats are a little hardier--but very little. My guess is that since blue cats aren't as popular, you bought from a batch that was in the holding tank for too long. I bought some redear once that were skinny and I put some in a trough. About a third died in the next few days but the rest fattened up and were o.k.

I have no proof of this, but I don't think that catfish in general survive stocking in a pond as well as bass and panfish. I stocked about 400 blugill and redear and 25 channel cats last May. As far as I know none of the panfish died, at least I didn't see any dead ones. Half the catfish were dead within a week.
I had another pond owner tell me that the same thing happened when he stocked catfish in his pond.

Larry

I had the same thing when I stocked this spring. I didn`t lose any bluegills,bass or perch but a dozen or so catfish went belly up in a few days.

I stocked 200 channels cats in my pond in March 4-6 inches in length. I have lost about 1 dozen total including the one that a tree fell on when I was removing trees from the south side of the pond over the weekend. They are around 10 inches long and eat vigerously when I feed them in the evening. I also lost two bluegill out of about 50 that I transferred from my neighbors pond but have had a good spring spawn and have hundreds of them now and lots of fathead minnow babies. Bob