Super cool!!!

Back around '05-'07 or so, my fish guy showed up with my order, and in another tank, he had these albino channel cats in the 4-6 lb. range. At the time, I wasn't really in to stocking any kind of 'unnatural' fish into my pond. But he convinced me, and I put (3) into my 4.5 acre pond. I never saw one of them again.

Sunil,

Do what do you think happened to them? Otters or perhaps did not survive handling, or maybe over the dam?

I used to have fishing rights to a pond that had a bunch of albino cats stocked in it, due to the owners wifes request. we could fish it and manage the pond any way we wanted, ie, remove fish if we thought it needed it or got overpopulated except for the albino catfish, had to release them back.

Beautiful fish but not really all that rare. Unusual? Yes. But, I’ve stocked quite a few of them. The mortality isn’t any different than others.

Did you ever catch any of the albinos?

If so, any idea of their catch rate versus normal CC?

Do albino CC breed true to reproduce only albinos?

If normal CC are introduced into the pond, is there a distinctive appearance for the first cross of normal x albino?

Just wondering if there would be any situations where it would be advantageous for a pond owner to stock albinos.

(Questions for gehajake and everyone else.)

My wife showed me the pic on her phone, and I said it probably wasn't that rare since people can stock albino CC and the fish probably washed out of someone's pond. She then called me a buzzkill!

I later saw the full story and read that it was an albino BLUE CATFISH.

I have no idea how rare those might be? I don't know if any hatcheries have them?

I subsequently told my wife I was wrong, and it might truly be a rare catch. She was unimpressed with my candor. I recovered zero of the "good husband" points that I lost with my initial comment!

I want to note that Zep's original post is about a BLUE catfish, and not a Channel Cat.

Yes, we almost always catch one when fishing for cats and we often see them when the feeder goes off. Some of them are getting fat, but not as big as the dark channel cats.

That is so cool and came out of public water WOW!

Leucism isn't common in blue cats, but it isn't all that uncommon either. Milford is loaded with piebald blues.