Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Stocking more channel catfish in my pond

I have a 10 acre pond that has largemouth bath, Bluegills and channel catfish.
I've fished the pond heavily for 3 years, and have concluded that the small catfish are all being eaten by the bass. I've never caught a catfish under 4 pounds.


I'd like to harvest some of those big catfish. How many CCathfish should I stock per acre? And what size?

How big are your BG and LMB? Do you see lots of different sizes of each? Do you have spawning habitat for your current CC?

Once you have bass, a small stocker cat has no chance.

Cody Note: Supplemental stocking of catfish in a pond with established LMbass the catfish need to be 8"-10"+ to have good percentage of survival.

When I moved here the pond was overpopulated with bass. Most were 10-12 inches. The bluegill are mainly 7-10 inches.

I love catching big bluegill, but I have culled about 300 bass from the pond. The bass now seem to be getting bigger.


I'm hoping to be selective with harvesting the BGs, and eventually have bigger bass and monster bluegills.

Any suggestions on how many per acre I should stock?

C44,

I am not a pro but FWIW my thoughts are, from you description, your LMB have over eaten the forage base, BG. You have no small BG and small bass. Your big CC are also a factor. I would address the too many small LMB issue first. Trying to use angling to remove enough LMB in a 10 acre pond to reduce their numbers is a start, but I doubt you can remove enough to solve the problem. Have you considered electro fishing or adding a non-reproducing predator to help with LMB removal? If it mas my pond here in Illinois, I would be stocking a few TM, maybe 25 or 30. I would work to get the LMB/BG ratio back to balance and then start removing some of the the TM. Adding CC now may just put additional pressure on the already overloaded BG spawn. Just my 2 cents and again, I am not a pro.

Bill D.

C44 - Do you have help removing the bass? Removing 300 bass - were all those removed in 2015? When you are seeing your bass getting bigger you are making progress getting enough bass out of the pond creating a more balanced fishery. One of the reasons your pond has lots of big bluegill(BG) is due to lots of small bass eating lots of small BG; actually an unbalanced situation of too many small bass that result in fewer BG but big BG. Then remaining BG get ample food for growth. For a more balanced fishery, I would not remove any BG until there seems to be more 3-5" BG present indicating they as fry are able to survive long enough to become adults.

Restocking larger catfish(CC) may not be real beneficial at helping produce high numbers of large BG. Larger CC are predatory and are eating fish (small bass and BG) primarily at night.

To help produce larger BG you want to have numerous of smaller bass 8"-12" to prey of small BG to keep their numbers lower. When you have more balanced fishery and want numerous big BG you should harvest the larger bass 16"+ since these bigger bass are eating numerous larger 3"-5"BG. You want a good number of 5"-6" BG to be present to take the place of those bigger BG that are harvested. Consider establishing a pellet feeding program (2or3 locations) to help increase the BG growth rate and keep their number at higher density.

You can stock smaller catfish (6"-8") if the LMbass are not bigger than 12"-14".

Adding TM (tiger musky) could be a option to help remove some of the 6"-12" bass when the TM grow to 24"+. TM can sometimes eat too many bass. If you decide to stock TM start slow and not more than 0.5 to 2 per acre because you want good numbers of bass less than 12"long for producing mostly big BG. Each TM could eat 180-300 fish per year and most(40-70%) of them could be bass.

You have to decide on your main goal for the fishery then manage toward achieving that goal.

Thanks for the informative response. The 300 bass were removed over the past 3 years. This was the first year I noticed the average bass size improving. I am considering implementing a feeding program next year.

Which brand of automatic feeder would you suggest?

Thanks again!

Thanks for the informative response. The 300 bass were removed over the past 3 years. This was the first year I noticed the average bass size improving. I am considering implementing a feeding program next year.

Which brand of automatic feeder would you suggest?

Thanks again!

The most bullet proof feeder is the Texas Hunter.