Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - catfish...do you?

Got a call from a landowner today. He was asking about what it takes to raise catfish for meat for the family.
It's easy to do, but I don't get lots of calls about that.
Tell me, please...who is interested in raising catfish for food?
Why or why not?
There may be an article for Pond Boss magazine here.

Rusto, I agree about not personally being too concerned about the spend on our ponds. I'm real good at self-rationalization.

I guess my comment could be asked as a question: If you don't feed, does your pond have enough forage fish in it to produce edible catfish?

I’m kinda different. I eat venison from my land but not the fish. They are pets. It would feel like eating the family dog if I had a dog.

I am butt deep in hogs but use them only for target practice. They are loaded with ticks and I don’t handle them. I tell the guys that deer hunt my place to give the coyotes a pass. They are the only predator that helps in my hog war. I was hunting at a corn feeder a couple of years ago and a big sow with a bunch of piglets came in and started eating the corn. A coyote ran in, grabbed a small pig, and kept going. I shot the sow. The song dogs are welcome on my land.

Everything else, snakes included, get a pass. I’m not mad at coons, possums, etc so they are safe.

There is a lot of info on CC production at SRAC including cost info and off-taste problems. Also, some info on feeding YP at northern counterparts. Also, info on feeding HSB for market.


https://srac.tamu.edu/categories/view/3

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.