Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose catfish problem?

Our pond was dug about this time last year and about 6 months ago we put in 50 channel cat fingerlings from a fish farm. At that time the pond was about half full. A few months later when the pond filled I put in 50 more from the same farm. Today we tried fishing to see just how big they were. We caught 2 pretty channel cats and 2 cats that I would describe as mud cats. Yellowish brown with a rounded tail. They were about the same size as the CCs. My question is could these have come from the farm mixed in with my ccs or did they get here by way of natural progression of the species. hopefully i did not get a whole bag of these from the farm, would a farm even raise mud cats? Seems strange that i gaught 4 fish and 2 were muds and 2 were ccs. I have pics I will try and post tomorrow but I know what a cc looks like and to make sure i looked on google images for mud cats and the pic looke like a ringer. Im going to call the farm in the morning. Thanks, please advise.
Travis
pond pics at http://www.fotki.com\tz

Is it possible that these are what we call butter cats in Fl.? If so they are better eating than cc. What did you stock for forage for the cc? I see your feeding with a feeder, Be interesting to see the pics of the catfish when they show up.

Serious bummer. Unless your pond gets overflow from a water source with fish, like a nearby stream, I'd be concerned that you stocked bullheads. I too would contact the fish farm. That just shouldn't happen.

The good thing about catfish is that they are really hardy, they grow really fast, and even edible size catfish are inexpensive to stock.

I expect that many others will post. But, if it were my pond, I'd kill the pond by draining it, liming it, or using rotenone. Then I'd find a reliable source of 10 to 20 inch channel cats. Maybe your dealer will work with you, and provide you with 50, or so, edible size channel cats. It doesn't take them long to start taking bait.

Good luck,
Ken

Definitely contact the fish farm and let them know. Take pictures, let them know that their fish were the only fish stocked. I would certainly hold them accountable.

There are some fish farms that do raise bullheads. Although they are not a favored fish by most, some people do like them. I personally think they taste better than channel cats. However, they are much harder to manage as they readily reproduce in ponds and often stunt even with predation which CC don't do nearly as much. If you don't get a bunch of hungry bass into your pond soon, you will end up with piles of 4"-5" stunted bullheads, I can almost guarantee you that!

Catmandoo's recommendation of starting over is a smart one if you don't want to stock bass into the pond. If managed correctly, bullheads can grow to 12"-16" in size and produce good tasting fillets and nuggets.

If you have not had a flooding event or a stream that someone connects to your pond where the bullheads could have come from, you most certainly got contaminated stock. I have seen bullheads be mixed with both CC and FHM.

link to catfish pics
http://public.fotki.com/tz/clearing-and-pond-p/fish/

thanks

One on the left is a nice chubby little channel cat... The one on the right looks like a nice chubby little yellow bullhead.

Can I name the fish farm, I thought they were
reliable

After thinking about it, if they didnt come from the fish farm the only way a fish could have gotten in is my overflow. I have a 4" pipe running to a ditch about 40 feet away and for about 2 days after the pond filled up I didnt have a screeen on it. I wouldnt have thought they would have swam against the current in the overflow while it was draining and after it was finished draining there was no water in the pipe. I know fish can appear in ponds over time but mud cats that size in 1 year? There are plenty of other ponds around and we get ducks and other birds all the time. Is it a possibility that those mud cats came as eggs on birds and are that big already? I would find that hard to believe without expert opinions. I would tend to think they came as small fish. Is there any logical way they came naturally and not from the farm. We started digging the pond on Mar 2 of last year and it was about half full by the end of that month.

I have stocked 350 coppernose and 50 of them were hand picked large ones out of my brothers pond that has coppernose the other 300 were fingerlings. I put in 8lbs of FHM and 15 F1 bass fingerlings. Do I need to put larger bass in there to help the MC population? I can try and catch a few floridas from my bros pond.

Do I need to put larger bass in there to help the MC population? IMOP your bass will catch up fast enough if you have other forage. You never answered that question, do you have other forage fish? If not then you might have to. The butter cats we catch out of the suwannee river look very similar but have added small spots all over them.

stocked 350 coppernose and 50 of them were hand picked large ones out of my brothers pond that has coppernose the other 300 were fingerlings. I put in 8lbs of FHM and 15 F1 bass fingerlings. Pond is .6 acres

I just spoke to the fish farm and they assured me that there were no mud cats in what I ordered. They do not raise them and there is no way I got a bag of them. She also told me that she had never heard of them being mixed in with CCs or FHMs. I was told that in 6 months a mud can go from egg to a 4-6 inch fish and that is about my situation. Hopefully I dont have many?!&*?#$.I will try and fish them out.

A trap from another thread.

Good luck.

I was going to advise, upon reading your first post back, not to call out the fish farm until you had spoken to them and gotten their side of the story.

When I asked about mentioning the fish farm I just wanted everyones opinion on them. I thought at the time and still do feel they are a quality operation. These fish just got in here from ducks I would guess. Ill be making traps this weekend.
thanks

I would highly doubt they came in with ducks, herons or any other bird. The odds of that happening are about as low and you and I both winning a multimillion dollar lottery on the same day! We've debated the bird moving fish egg theory thoroughly on this forum. Highly unlikely! And, you are catching more than 1 of them... That means two eggs survived the trip on a bird's body, of different sexes and then pulled off a spawn all in that time period? I am better the bullheads swam up your drainage pipe. Bullheads and GSF love to swim up drainage pipes to make new homes. That or you got a contaminated order...

Obviously that "mud cat" is a juvenile but it doesn't look anything close to what we call a mud cat here in Arkansas. I'm not a catfish expert by any means so take that for what it's worth. A mud cat from my experience will be whitesh belly with yellow sides progressing to a black back it will be usually short and very stocky looking excessively wide across the head when mature. That fish in the picture almost looks like a CC with a different pigmentation. Bottom line I don't know what it is but I don't think it's a mud cat.

let me clarify what I meant. The flathead is what is commonly referred to as a mud cat in the area I live in. I'm going to go with bullhead as my guess.

That is the problem with common names... They often refer to the same species. Some areas mudcats are bullheads and other area ore flathead catfish. The non channel catfish in the picture is a yellow bullhead. A couple other views of yellow bullheads.

View 1

View 2

View 3

View 4

There are three common bullhead species, black, brown and yellow. The yellow can easily be told apart from the other two species in that it's chin barbels are pure white and sometime mixed with some yellow, VERY rarely brown or black like in the other two species which always have brown or black pigmentation to their chin barbels.