Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Help me grow big Blue cats

I strongly suspect that any effort you can put in to feed train them would be rewarded.

How often are you at the ponds?

Sunil I just noticed your question.

How many ponds.
Well I have a 5 acre bass pond and about 4 other .25 acre bass ponds.

then the holy grail. We have a 30 acre bass lake!!! All of them were made by my dad, my grandpa, a D6 dozer and a Lima dragline about 40 years ago. My grandpa bought the land and was in the crane rental business. On his spare time he did one thing...
Dig ponds!!!!

His wife asked him to build her the biggest and best bass lake you can handle so thats what he did. Thats literally what happened. he damned up a deep creak and after 2 years of working on and off he had 30 acres of water. The damn is about 300yrds long. 25ft at the damn and about 12-15ft average across the rest in depth.

Anyways, thats called dedication and a lot of other adjectives. I mean that man worked. My dad says most of the time my grandpa made my dad grease the machine while he was working. "NO TIME TO SHUT IT DOWN" is what he'd say. Thats pretty funny.

Bruce, I think about feed training them, but then again. I haven't checked into feeders but I bet one would run say $500. Then a bag of feed is say $25. I would think I might have to feed a bag a week to get any kind of benefit. Thats $100 a month.

Feeding for six months in the growing season would run $600 + the feeder which is $1100.

I could buy 2600 CNBG or 110lbs of minnows.

Am I even in the ballpark on this, maybe you don't have to feed as much as I think, but it seems getting a forage fish population established is way cheaper...

Correct me if im wrong...
After all I want BIG CATFISH!!!!!

Feed will always be cheaper in the long run if you're trying to push the envelope as far as the biomass in your pond.

Are you there enough to feed train them by hand?

75 fish, and you want to add 5 pounds per year per fish, that's 750 pounds of feed per year, if that's all they ate....so I'll bet it's more like 400 pounds of feed, which you could probably get for around 200 bucks.

That's cheap compared to stocking fish, I think.

Chad, lets look at it this way.

With forage fish, the catfish will gain about 1 lb. per 10 lbs. of fish eaten.

With pellets, the catfish gain 1 lb. per 2 pounds of pellets.

That equals $100 per lb. of fish growth with forage fish(assuming $10/lb.) versus $1 per lb. with pellets.

OH... now we are clearing things up a bit.

I guess i'll try to feed them, have you heard of anyone feeding blues.

I'll give it a try maybe if I can find a feeder that not expensive.

I have a 55gal barrel and can build the feeder for free, do they make motors that I could install on the bottom. I've made tons of deer feeders before but never seen a single direction motor for sale by itself....

http://www.bossbuck.com/products/feeders/controlsystems.html

Looks like I may have found a motor. Anyone have any recommendations, Texas hunter is all i've ever used for deer.

Texas Hunter also makes good fish feeders. I don't have any personal experience with them but n8ly spoke highly of them at the conference.

These 10"+ blue cats were eating more than 50lbs fish food per day in a 1/2 acre pond this summer. They are the largest blue cat fingerlings that we've produced due to super-successful spawn in 2007.

My bad for not recommending a feeding program. Sometimes I do assume that folks know we've been feeding our fish pellets on the farm for economic production, as opposed to live food.

I recommended Chad stock larger bluegill than 1"-3" for better survival rates, and Chad followed that advise by purchasing 3"-6" bluegill...not 1"-3" fish.

Can keep them on fish food, but if you want trophy blues in your pond eventually then better have some live forage. We rarely see blues over 10-12lbs eating fish food on in our broodstock pond, but the largest blues are obese with ample shad and bluegill as forage.

Also we have Texas Hunter Feeders here for sale, and don't worry yourself to death over 75 blue cats in a .6 acre pond....they'll help themselves most of the time. Blue catfish are the closest thing to sharks that you can stock in a southern freshwater pond!!!

FYI THESE FISH HAVE BEEN FEED-TRAINED FOR 1.5 YEARS.

Chad, I probably have a couple AMERICAN HUNTER 6 volt feeder motors I will give you. I built my feeder with a 55g barrel and set it on edge of a submerged island. I used 10' 1/2" pvc pipe for a square ring and attached a 5g bucket with part of the bottom cut out over the motor so the food drops straight down.

Blues are easy to feed-train. If I need to post a video of this years blue-cat crop crawling over each-other like "maggots on a gut-pile," just say so........

SO!

OK, thanks to bbjr I hope to have some video available soon. Stay tuned.

OK I have a video posted of the same fish that Chad just stocked, captured just before the pond boss conference. The video is taken with digital camera so not super high quality. I'll get some more video of blues feeding sometime soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bX1SB4jV6M

Well if it will enhance growth I think i'll feed them for a year or so. Then, as Todd stated when they get larger they may not take food anymore, by then i'll have the pond in top shape hopefully full of forage fish.

I called my feed store and they stock two kinds of feed. One of them says "32% Floating Catfish Food" the guy didn't find a brand name on it anywhere $16 a bag. The other is "Purina Game Fish" $25 a bag I believe it is Non-floating.

What do you guys think about those two?

Also, what is the short story on Damaging your pond by feeding. I need to read up on that and what happens. I don't want to have to go back and clean out my pond out just because I was trying to grow fish a little faster.


Lastly, I have some photos of the pond I'd like to post, to talk about. I can't seem to load them though.... I could email them to someone though if they thought they could stick'em on here. If someone can help let me know.

Purina Game Fish Chow floats.

FYI, I stocked 3-5" blues this spring and within about 3 days, they started on the Purina GFC. They eat as well as any other species in the pond, YP, BG, HBG, RES, BC and CC. they are all about 12" now(the Blues) and I have 20 of them in my .6 acre pond with 40 CC which are now about 9". Starting next year, I will start to thin some of the cats down as their biomass goes up.
One more thing no one has mentioned would be once he has the Bass thined out and the HSF down to acceptable numbers, what about structures to allow the CNBG to spawn and allow some of the offspring to be safe all year to allow for more offspring in following years. With this, for the next 3 years Id keep or feed to the coons, every panfish over about 5" . Am I thinking right on this?, let em spawn 1 time and then get em out of there until the Blues are over about 7 lbs then allow any size panfish in there, just my thoughts here and I am no expert. I am just starting with a idea and figure Ill be correctively/reactively stocking from here on out and that shalf the fun, isnt it??

Salmonid

I was already thinking about that. As far as structures, there is about a 20ft tree that was growing along the edge that fell in on one side. Also, I took another 20ft tall tree with my tractor and pushed it out into the lake. I think i'll add a little more cover but with the majority of the bass getting taken out I think i'll get the CNBG pop. going pretty good in the spring

Well I started yesterday trying to feed train. I think i might have had one fish come up for about a minute. I went down this morning and didn't see anything. I'll keep working with them maybe once a day. Im throwing out 3 cup fulls.

if you only have one coming up you could save yourself a little $ by only throwing a cup or less untill you get some good feeding action. I don't know how this workis in TX but the fish have slowed down a lot on feed here in IL. Also, if there is a lot of food leftover after feeding you could cause some water quality problems. I know 3 cups isn't much but I don't like to have unused food floating around my pond (waste not want not).

just my 1/2 cent.

Just thought i'd give an update on the Blue cats. I didn't have much luck getting them back on feed. They were in the pond for about 2 weeks before I tried to feed them. I saw one come up for a little bit then dissapeared. I tried about 3-4 times then stopped. They might have a ton to eat in the pond being that they are the first cats in the pond. Also It might be already cooling off too much. That pond is about 15' deep. I don't know if that has any factor.

Anyways, unless you guys think different I think I might just wait untill the water warms back up to start trying to feed them again... What do you think? Do you guys stop feeding then start back up with no trouble?

Also, they were 12-14" when I put them in. How big will they be approx. in summer and then this time next year if they have a decent year? Reason for asking is Im gonna be trapping out HBG in the 6" range and Im thinking about feeding these Blues with them. I don't think they could eat a 6" gill untill maybe this time next year... IF so I might cut up and freeze all the HBG that I trap and then just throw some in every other day or so...

Anyone do this kind of thing? i wonder if it will be beneficial for them.

Does anyone know where I could get Tiger Muskie in Michigan or surrounding area, any hatcheries, thanks for all you do on PBF, I surscribe!

Does anyone know where I could get Tiger Muskie in Michigan or surrounding area, any hatcheries, thanks for all you do on PBF, I surscribe!

well I sure can't help in Texas. you might want to start a thread about it.

Not real sure why you double-posted that on a Blue catfish thread...

Either way my update to my Blues is about 2 posts up.

sorry, I am new at this, and messed up.