Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations CC growth and spawing questions???

In April 2006, I stocked 200 fingerling channel cats in my small 3/4 acre pond. I also stocked 300 copper nose bluegill and three pounds of fathead minnows. The minnows seemed to spawn right away and have been doing great!! The bluegill sort of disapeared, but this past summer, we sien netted them and cought hundreds and hundreds of them. Most were quarter sized, but some are palm sized, so they are doing great.

Every night we through out floating catfish food and enjoy watching the feed. The size differences betweeen them is amazing. Some are large, while others are much, much smaller. Just about every weekend, my wife and ten year old daughter go fishing and are doing very well. The current prefered bait is hot dogs. For whatever reason, my wife usually catches the cats and my daughter catches the bluegill.

We have a cheap fish scale from walmart, so it's not going to be 100% accurate, but 18 months, the biggest ones are right at 3 pounds!!!!!!!!!!

Then last weekend, something totally unexpected happened. Steph cought a baby catfish. It's easilyt three to four times larger then the fingerlings that I put in there last year, but I can't believe it's one of them. The others are all over a pound, and as you can see from his picture, he's nowhere near that size.

I know it must have happened, but still doubt it. Did they spawn? Everything that I've read says that channel cats have to be three years old, or older to spawn. Did I get that wrong? Obviously, I must have, but this is the only one we've cought and we've never seen any other small ones while feeding.

Eddie

Eddie, that little guy looks like a bullhead to me.

What's a bullhead?

Black Bullhead

Yellow Bullhead

For sure a bullhead.

Kodaik