I completely agree and have not found a local source in Indiana. My newest pond is calling for blue catfish as the apex predator.
Yes! That's going to be my plan as well. I'm contemplating a BC/HSB pond at the moment. I'm just not a huge fan of LMB anymore.
I have not seen the Arkansas fish trucks offering Blue Catfish either. A neighbor has a few in his 1.4 acre pond, that were wild caught and put in at something under two pounds. That was several years ago, and some of them exceed 20 pounds now, on natural forage. He hasn't fed in several years.
That's awesome. Sadly, I'm probably going to have to bucket stock some to get them started, create some spawning structure/cavities and hope they can reproduce. Do you know if the ones in your neighbor's pond have spawned?
