Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations catfish eggs?

I caught several catfish in my pond for a quick meal for me and my wife. While cleaning these fish I noticed that several of them had eggs in their belly. My question is, does this mean that the catfish will be spawning this spring or is this typical of female catfish. By the way the fish that i caught were all Channel Cats.

Thanks, Newbee

channel cat need the proper habitat to spawn. they prefer to spawn inside something like a box, old tire, hole, etc. with that in mind you can limit the amount of reproduction by reducing this type of habitat. even if you have alot of good channel spawning habitat and they do spawn sucessfully the baby cats are slow swimmers and usually get devoured by bass

Shan O'Gorman
Pro Ponds

I thought that channels and blues didn't spawn until the second or third year

I believe the channels can produce eggs the first year but are not viable until the second. BUT don't worry with bass you will not have a succesful recurtment of channel catfish.

Thanks, Greg

With all you have to worry about having a smaller pond, I didn't want to have to worry about catfish overpopulating also. Thanks again for the information.

Channel catfish mature sexually according to size. While fish less than a year old don't normally spawn, they certainly can develop mature eggs. But, that's quite rare. Since you have other species of fish, don't worry about catfish reproducing. They spawn last each spring, after all other fish have finished round 1, so there are usually plenty of other young fish to eat succulent little channel kittens.

What if you don't want the kittens eaten??

Maybe you could save them as caviear for your self

big_pond, alabama cooperative extension system publication ANR 327 discusses at length how to keep your "kittens" from being eaten ie. raise catfish fingerlings. it's free and easy to order from their website. i've gotten several useful publications from them.