Just a quick update on this for my own records. A couple days of fishing over Memorial weekend and I think I have a decent grasp on some trends in my pond. Over 2 days time, we caught 25 catfish. Of those 25 fish, 16 were blue cats. 13 of those blues were fall of 2016 stocking, and 3 were fall of 2015 stockers. The fall of 2015 stockers were 16.5", 18" and 19" in length and very thick. Of the 9 channel catfish we caught, 1 was 6 lbs, 5 were 4 lbs, and 3 were 1-1.5 lbs.
Some observations.... while I don't have any idea of the number of channel catfish in my pond, the fact that I only stocked 350 blues and 2/3 of the fish I caught were blues is very surprising to me. I'm not sure if I don't have thousands of channel cats as I suspected, or if the blue cats are just more aggressive right now. Probably a combination of the two, but this surprised me very much. Also, the size of channel catfish that I caught last year averaged at least a pound, if not a pound and a half less. So feeding seems to be paying off.
PS For those wanting to catch large catfish, using skipjack on jug lines seems to be very effective on my pond.
Pictures to come......
