I am looking for ideas for cheap and durable spawning structure for blue catfish in a small pond now under construction. It may only be .3-.4 acres. I am thinking large plastic trash cans with a hole cut in the lid? Also looking for the best forage species to keep them well fed without pellets. Maybe BG, GSH, or YP?

Boy! i sure hope to see alot of responses on this!

Tie or wire the lid to the can. Better is to wire a board, vinyl siding or similar material to the front end so it blocks the lower part of the opening about 3-6" high across the front. All you need is something to keep the eggs from rolling out of the front. Sunfish including BG are the prolific forage that would work. It will be an interesting project.

Thank you for the response. I am having fun. I thought BG might work. I agree about wiring the lids on the trash cans. Excavation is ongoing as I type. Life is good! I hope that you can visit sometime.

check craigslist, a lot of places sell plastic barrels that might work well. The smaller 20, 25 or 30 gallon variety might be the perfect size. You could easily sawzall the top off or part of the top off and leave the bottom half of the lid so the eggs don't roll out.

If you look at this link you can see in the picture in front of the 55 gallon barrels a group of smaller ones. Those are the perfect size. I see others on CL in the Indy area sell the smaller barrels too. By us the smaller barrels go for $5 or less each if they are not rated as food grade. For the pond, you don't need food grade.

CL ad for plastic barrels

Check this option too:

$10 each

Many years ago, my brother and I used garbage cans to remove bullheads from our pond. As Bill suggested, we cut eight inch holes in the lids of 30 gallon garbage cans. Holes were cut off-center and lids wired on. The cans float horizontally with the hole at the top. We removed many bullheads and dumped incredibly large egg masses into the pond to become food for other fish.

Thank you all for the suggestions on spawning structure! What would you suggest as the forage species?

I just realized that I have two 55-gallon plastic drums that I made into dog houses a bunch of years back by cutting a hole in one end leaving a circular "flange" all around. Do you think this size drum is too big?

Try the 55 gallon drums. When blue cats get big the 55 gal size is almost too small. As predatory as blues are you will have a hard time keeping enough forage in the pond unless you have very few predators or feed them frequently.

Do you think that YP or BG would be better as food? I could add BG, YP, and GSH and see which does best?

This is great to hear as it is exactly what I'm trying to do with my pond. I want my blue cats to destroy my carp population. Which as terrible as they are, may be the best forage for blue cats.

Diversity of forage species is usually the best plan. BG are the most prolific of the three noted.

I'll probably add FHM first and then start transferring a few GSH next, followed by the YP and then BG. The source for blue cats might be a bit tricky.

Rah
How deep will you put the barrels and will you anchor it down with cinder blocks?

Good question on the depth. Maybe in 5-6' of water so they will not be seen and will stay submerged during a drought? I plan to put a large rock in each barrel and drill a a couple holes on the upside to allow air to escape.

As noted, BCs are effective, hungry predators, and they'll get big in a pond with decent forage....really big. I'm not sure BG by themselves will be able to provide enough substance for a breeding population of BC without a lot of culling. I have no idea of how to assess relative weights of BCs, but mine were not great [big mouths, thinner bodies] until I was aggressive with additional forage for them.
I have had plenty of recruitment without any special accommodations for the BCs, and would be afraid of encouraging them too much--a large population of BCs of a few pounds each could put a big hurt on the up and coming BG population, robbing the behemoths of adequate forage. And the little guys are aggressively piscivorous-I catch them on crankbaits regularly.

A suggestion of adding pumpkinseeds to the mix. They would stay most of their lives in the mouth gap range of small to mid-sized BC's. Plus the multiply at great rates.

I would love to have pumpkinseeds but am not sure how to source them. Getting the blue cats might be a trick in itself. Right now, the area has not even had all the topsoil removed over the whole basin. In a lot of it, 2-3' needs to be removed to get to solid red clay. The stuff being removed has a lot of clay in it, but I want solid red clay for the core and inside of the dam/berm. The outflow will only be 3' over existing grade at the lowest existing level.

This is a very very important topic for me...
couple of questions here....
1) Do blues have a better recruitment than channels?? In other words do they have any sort of better chance of spawning than channels?
2) has anyone ever stocked Blues from the wild and try to get them to spawn ?
3) what is the disadvantages to stocking blues from the wild as apposed to getting them from a nursery?

Thanks any help on this is highly appreciated!

1) Channels are supposed to be faster growers/breeders than the Blues.
2) Not I.
3) From what I have learned, stocking from a nursery gives you a few things you can not get from the wild:
Consistency in size.
Familiarity with feeders.
Less chance of contamination from other species of fish (eggs) or plant life from the water.

To me, the consistency in size is important. I tried to stock the feeder fish earlier so they would have a chance to get to a breeding size and go through at least one cycle before the predator fish were big enough to feed on the fry let alone the bigger ones. I hope it all works out that way. The catfish seem to be spoiled on the fish feeder anyway. They are acting like piranhas when it goes off. Such fun to watch.

A friend if mine has some blues in a 1.4 acre pond that is fed by a small very rocky creek with about 300 acres of watershed. As far as he can tell they have never spawned. He put them in at about 1-2 pounds or so, wild caught. I have seen some that appeared to be 12-15 pounds up in the edge of the feeder creek. Friend says some will go 20 pounds. I was fishing there for BG with ultralight about a year ago. I had about a 7-inch BG hit the lure, fought it for maybe 10 seconds, when something took the BG and went out into the middle of the pond, screaming my drag. It finally let go, and I pulled in a roughed up BG. I think that was one of the blue catfish. They are by far the apex predators of that pond.

I've got a 16 acre pond where I've had decent CC recruitment for decades now. I stocked it with BC in the fall of '15. It'll be interesting to compare spawning success.

I consider 16 acres a small lake.

16 acres of water would be awesome!

16 acres of clean water that wasn't full of trash fish would be awesome!!

Do you have water quality issues in your lake?

Very much so. Largely due to carp and soil type. My eventual plan is to drain and kill everything and start over. But I've got an older uncle that still lives on the pond that wouldn't appreciate that. And I'd like my boys to be old enough to take part in the pond rehab. So the plan for now is to see what blue cats will do to the place.

NEDOC,
Is your lake one of the large borrow pits along Interstate 80?

Nope. Just an old flood control lake put in by the NRD back in the early 70s.

Bummer on the carp...