Thanks for the responses, everyone.
Doing some math, it takes about two pounds of catfish food to gain a pound of fish. Grain-based catfish food is about $.45 per pound, give or take a little bit. That means we can grow a pound of catfish for around $1.00 per pound. They fillet out about 40-45%, so feed cost per pound of fillet is a little over $2.25. That doesn't seem like too bad of a cost. Feed efficiency is probably actually better than two to one because there will be some natural food in each pond. Lots of people think channel catfish are scavengers--far from it. They are definitely carnivores, but will eat vegetation if they have to--making them more like omnivores. I've electrofished catfish in fishing lakes whose bellies were loaded with bluegills or minnows, sometimes even a small bass or two. To me, the biggest risk raising catfish for food are predators such as otters and cormorants. The fingerlings are cheap and it doesn't take too long to grow food-sized catfish. Like mentioned above, harvest can be a bit of a pain, because you can't necessarily catch a bunch at a time.
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