Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Feeding Blue catfish feeding pattern

Hoping to get pointed in the right direction. My understanding LMB when water is quite cold may eat only one meal every other day. Warming water brings LMB to consume more meals per day. With peak water temps and available food LMB may consume a meal every few hours.

I've really been searching for good reliable information on blue catfish feeding habits. Most are very non descriptive just stating they feed on shad and other bait fish source. What I want to know since these are some what active predators do they process meals at the same rate that LMB will? How often do BC feed?

That's a good question for catfish in general. In my experience, CC will hit pellets until they can't move when the water is between 75 and 85. Not near as aggressive when temps are higher or lower.

Snakebite,
I just read an article this past weekend concerning the feeding habits of CC and BC as I just turned my feeder back on. The article did not indicate how many times daily that the CC and BC fed, but the article did state that the maximum growth temps for CC and BC's were 78-93 degrees, and that the lesser growth rate temps were from 64-71 degrees. Let me see if I can find the link and I will PM it to you.


I also believe that geography will play a part in minor temperature variances throughout the country.

That fits reasonable with my experience. Hope you can find the link Charlie but, dangit man!, post it!

Thanks pass along anything you have that would be helpful. Reasoning behind my question is I wonder if stocking BC along with smaller numbers LMB would still have the same effects on managing panfish ponds. We have 3 ponds on our property that have both BC and FHC so the experience won`t be the same since my FHC are large enough to really put a chomp on the largest BG and Redear stocked.

Snakebite I know you are a catfish guy. If you could pick between eating CC, BC or FHC, which one would you pick?

I`ll give you the three for three deal. CC less than 3 pounds good all the way around. BC have whiter meat even in the bigger ones with much less fat. FHC have a very soft meaty belly portion that can be filleted and it`s wonderful. All three have their own place, but if your twisting my arm FHC belly meat is the most tender fillet I will take over crappie every time.

[img]https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&a...channel+catfish[/img]


A pretty lengthy pdf, but a good read.

Thanks for the read strickem. Looked through a few of the other links. Wonder what is the difference in food consumption of live prey vs feed or if there would be any difference.

Not sure about the 100 channel cat and 40 BC that were put in this last year, they don't come to the feeder at all so I'm not sure what's going on there. Have caught a few of them late last year on crappie jigs in various places in the pond but never see them at feeding time....

How big were they Pat when stocked and how big are the ones you caught on jigs?

SB,
Not sure about pellet consumption vs. live forage. I understand small BC and CC will predominately consume pellets (when available) until they reach the ~3lb range, then they switch over to forage fish. I put some 4" BC and CC in my pond on 7/3/15. I could see them skimming the top of the water with mouth's open when the feeder went off, kind of like a vacuum cleaner. I caught several BC on 8/9/15 that were 7 1/4" lg. I also caught a couple of CC on 8/29/15 that were 10" long. It's hard to believe that they could grow that quickly, but I was feeding Cargill 4512 heavily at the time. It will be interesting to see what size they are this spring.

I rarely saw my CC take feed till they got to about a foot long. If I sat perfectly still on the bank and waited for a while and used some sinking feed close to shore, I MIGHT see one once in a while.

Now that they have gotten up around the two pound mark, they come runnin for the feed. Floating and sinking, though I still have a few that will hardly come to the top of the water to get it. I did not feed much sinking feed the latter part of last year, and I could see several frantically swimming around the bottom looking for feed when they knew the others were getting it.

If you want to see the smaller ones, get some sinking feed and each day throw some out in the same spot at about two foot depth. They will soon start showing up regularly. They are easily spooked till they get used to being fed, so hold still while watching for them.

The CC were 6-8" and the BC were 8-11" when put in and were about a pound when caught on jigs.