Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Bluecats, an option?

I don't read much about bluecats on the forum, have considered them in addition to cc, lmb, bg. Is there any reason a few BC should not be added along with the aforementioned mix? New pond will be 5+acres, 27' at dam and half or more surface backed into woods.

Dave, I stocked 100 blue cats about five years ago and was unable to fish them out. As they grow, they break the line of ordinary bass tackle and just swim away, never to be seen again - until you have a fish kill. It's much easier to remove and dispose of floating bass and other smaller sunfish than it is to dispose of thirty-pound blue cats.

Dudle, I understand they {BC} get really large, and I see how ordinary tackle would not cut it. Did you try trotlines? I'll probably just stick with CC, it just seemed neat to have that huge fish as a possibility and the shock value of landing one. When any kind of cat gets over 15 or so pounds I believe you lose palatability anyway.

From what I understand if your pond is not real big....usually BC will not spawn! So if you add a limited number you might be alright. Perhaps one of the longtimers can set us straight on this one as I am not 100%.

Blues will spawn in a small pond. Last summer we had some brood stock in a 1/4 acre pond for holding, and we collected over 20,000 blue fingerlings. Figured that was just a few to many in a 1/4 acre pond.

Kodiak

Welcome, Kodiak. I'm a fish farmer too.

Interesting post. Were there special conditions that allowed the blue cats to do so well? It would seem that would be a possible way to make money around here. There is more demand than supply for blues in general.

Bruce, there were no special conditions at all in this pond. We were holding blue cats in it for hybrid use. We used some and left others and we had fry. There is nothing in this pond but a slick bottom with no spawing cans or anything. I'm guessing that you can spawn them just like ccf. I restocked this fingerling (6"-8") in a 5 acre pond and am currently raising them to a 2# fish just to see how they will do. It took awhile to get them back on feed after we moved them so we put some channel cat with them to get them going. We don't raise blues but since we had the fingerlings, we thought we would try it and see how it goes. So far I guess they are sold as soon as they get big enough. May have to try and raise some more someday.

Kodiak

In your opinion do blue cats assimilate to pelleted feed as well, or nearly as well as channel catfish? If they did, I guess you'd have an alternative to tradition channel cat stocking strategies. I guess the only problem is that they will become so big that they may become the top of the food chain, eating even your best largemouth bass.

I think they eat pellet fish feed just as good as channel does. I'm not sure how they grow on pellet fish feed as they get older, but they sure hit it hard as fingerlings.It seems like they would be the top of the the food chain in just a few years with them getting so big that it would be hard to remove with pole and line. That would be a problem with the pay lake business. I think that is why they are not stocked in many ponds.

Kodiak

My experiences with blues is that they will outgrow channels in their third or fourth years. Blue catfish are more predatory than their channel cat cousins, even though they eat fish food. Blues grow much larger than any other fish purposely stocked in a pond. I have seen blues larger than 50 pounds in medium-sized lakes. A fish so large will eat any other fish, including a four or five pound bass. If you stock blue catfish, prepare for their large sizes.

Bring it on, blue cats!

Hoooooo RAY!!!!! for the Big bad BLUE!!!! I LOVE EM!!

That is the exact reason I got 25 from Overton's this fall.