Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat cave for catfish

i searched and couldnt find anything on it so i'll bring it up. We all know that catfish need undercut banks, hallow logs or something similar to spanwn in. but do catfish stay there? from my exsperience fishing the bureau creek here in northern illinois i think the biggest ones do. for example my uncle pulled a 15lb channal cat on a mini betty lure fishing for SMB. this cat was caught as the lure came off a shallow 3-5' flat into a deep 8-12' channal with deep undercut banks. another large channal cat was caught in similar conditions. and iv caught pleanty of 3-5lb ones in situations that are like this except a little less profound drop offs. so my question is why cant we use caves like we use brushpiles? this way we will be able to locate the larger cc when we want to catch them. My pond will have five caves one in ten feet of water, three in 6-8' of water and one in four feet of H2O at the entrance of the pond in the old creek channal. i have an igloo dog house i will weight with concrete the other four will be made of rocks and boulders. anyone have any exsperience with things like this

BC Master,
I put 2 12"dia X 6' plastic culverts at about 6 feet deep and put stones all around them so it looks like a stone cave. I'm stocking in april but have been told to stay way fro CC because with underground structure they will spawn like crazy and take over. Something about LMB not eating them?
Thats all I have for now.
Ron

Ron, I wouldn't worry about CC taking over. Bass will absolutely eat them. It is rare for a baby CC to escape predation from bass and other sunfish.

Agree, LMB and BG (and probably other fish) will eliminate almost all CC recruitment from a pond.

Thanks for the help.
Ron