Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Catfish problem

I have an 8 acre lake in southern Illinois. The pond was built in 1990, I purchased the property last May. Long story short the pond had a serious problem of overcrowded channel catfish. I have taken out over 5,000 catfish since I purchased the property. Last year I took out around 3,000. I put in 500 3-5 inch bluegill and 1,500 bluegill 5-8 inch range and 100 bass 10-14 inches. This year i have taken out over 2,000 catfish and stocked another 1,000 3-5 in bluegill and 100 5-8 inch bass.

What I have notice so far :
I can finally catch a decent amount of bluegills when fishing. The bluegills have spawned successfully several times and there are all different size classes. The bass seem to be doing fine. A handful of the larger ones blow up on the gills when I feed (AquaMax 300 twice a day.) there are still too many catfish. I caught 60 out today from one spot on shore.

The catfish range from 4 inches to 4 lbs. the ladder being the exception. Average catfish is 8-12 inches and I can catch them with little effort. The fish obviously spawned successfully over the years and took over. I can’t really seine the pond due to lay downs everywhere. I have purchased a large trap to try waiting for it to come in the mail.

If any of you experienced pond guys have any tips on getting the kitties out I’m all ears. I no I’ll
Never get rid of them but if I can get there numbers down to a “nice bonus fish” I’d be very happy. I hope the bass and gill numbers will keep young of the year from
Being future problems.

Sorry for the novel.

Wow, never seen this. Catfish recruitment is generally pretty poor in an established body of water with predators. And, the larger cats are also predators.

Given the size of your cats and the numbers you have removed ... AND ... that you now have BG and LMB ... I can really add nothing other than to keep harvesting catfish. In a few of years the BG and LMB will be the dominant fish

Any chance some of the smaller ones are actually bullhead? I agree with Dave, it would be very difficult for catfish to recruit to these numbers in an 8 acre lake. I could be totally wrong, just a thought.

Thanks for the replies. They are definitely channel catfish. The previous owner apparently fixed the levee 3 years ago. I am not sure what that means, but would imagine he drained the pond significantly if not all together. Maybe he stocked it with only channel cats after due to them being cheap and he was going to sell property. Who knows. Either way prior to my stocking other species I never caught or saw another species of fish.

I’d post a picture of the catfish but I can’t figure out how. I’m on an i-phone an the site won’t let me copy and paste and won’t let me add in attachments either. O well you guys just have to trust that I no the difference between channels and bullheads haha.

Never doubted.

Perfect, I apologize if my question about bullheads sounded rude. I didn't mean any harm, just thinking through the possibilities.

I didn’t take that way at all. It would make sense for a pond to be riddled with bullheads. My situation doesn’t seem normal haha.

I’m looking forward to trying the trap I bought so I’m always fishing. Basically a hoop net but made out of wire so you don’t need river current to keep it open. I feel like this year is the turning point of taking back the pond. After two more bluegill spawns through out summer I think I’ll stock another 200 5-8 inch bass. To get their numbers up as new predator.

Kitties are probably here to stay but they don’t need to dominate pond.

There would be nothing to ashamed of for misidentification but there were clues in your original post that led me to think I could rule out Bullheads. In particular the average weight and range of sizes.

Ya I used to misidentify warmouth and rock bass. It happens. Took 42 more catfish out this afternoon with girls. Hoping to convince them to go back out after dinner.

Wow, that is a lot of fish catching. What kind of bait do you use? I've got channel cat in my pit, but don't fish for them much.
Thanks, John

I usually just use a piece of night crawler under a slip bobber like I’m panfishing. When I feed the bluegills I have 10-15 pieces of wet AquaMax 600 and I’ll put it on a hook. I’ll dangle it front of the catfish on a long rod and sucker them out of the packs of bluegill. The bigger ones have grown wary of the night crawler.

I've been absorbing all the info I can about catfish recruitment in ponds, and most sources will say the same thing, but it's extremely dependent on two things: Spawning habitat and structure. If you go out of your way to create places for them to spawn, they WILL spawn, and if you have places for the fry/fingerlings to escape predation, they WILL take over a BOW. If you just have a hole with water in it, they probably won't spawn, and if they do, the little ones will have no where to hide. I've even seen some websites flat-out claim that catfish won't spawn at all in ponds, and its just not true.

You are inspirational!

Mine spawn. I fish to control their numbers every year. I need to take more out this year as the last two years have been kind to them.

My pond is loaded with fallen trees and 10 or standing dead timber. There is even a huge log jam in the middle of the pond the previous owner made. There is plenty of prime habitat. Which will be good when the pond is balanced but not so good for recruitment and survival of the catfish.

My hope is catfish spawn once and gills spawn at least three times here. If I replace the catfish with bluegill and bass over time it should be fine (I hope)

I am shocked to see the bluegill doing so well figured the small catfish would directly compete with them and larger ones would eat them. Not to mention the bass eating the gills as well. I do feed but once a day in one spot I doubt it makes that much of impact but maybe it is.

Thanks for the reply rtripple, I may try to catch some of my channel cat.

We have had CC spawns every year. We harvest a lot every year to keep populations in check.

Our LMB population is finally gaining steam after failing spawns the first few years, so the CC recruitment may change from here on out. We have both spawning cavities via stumps and ledges and quite a lot of habitat for the fry to hide.

Just got back inside took 28 more out. 15 or so with a piece of night crawler before feeding. The rest were fooled pre soaked AquaMax 600 on a hook sniping the catfish out of the pack of feeding gills. Set the catfish trap as well hopefully that will yield some results.

Snrub, do your small catfish (under 14 inches) compete with your gills for the forage in the pond? I kinda assumed juvenile catfish would eat the same foods as bluegills.

Are all those catfish you are catching edible ? Just curious.
jim

Jim, they are all edible I fillet out the ones that are 10 inches or bigger. Usually if I catch 50 catfish 10-15 are worth cleaning. The rest are critter food and tossed into the woods. I do have plenty in the freezer.

I too have a catfish problem. My pond is only 2 acres. I've grown tired of eating the bottom dwellers. Pond still stays so muddy that it's hard to catch any other fish. I toss the ones I catch. Most of them in the 4-5 lb. range. I usually just take the .22 with me and set the feeder off.

Call the nearest Boy Scout troupe around you and see if they would like to fish it for their merit badges

Pat Williamson, I wasn’t even aware of merit badges for fishing. But I only did maybe a year of scouts when I was kid.

There is and 7 boys got theirs last year from my pond, kinda cool I thought

You guys that are getting productive catfish spawns are a lot different that my situation. I have a 1/4 or so acre pond that had nothing but BG and GSF. Three years ago, my Grandson wanted some cats so I stocked 25 six to 8 inch CC's. The existing ones, all 9 of them, are pellet hogs but I've never seen a successful spawn. When I stocked my larger one, I put in cats along with BG, FHM and then bass. Never seen any indication of a spawn. I doubt that I even have one after 2 years of cormorant visits.

I never really thought about it. I suppose they do.

We remove whatever CC we catch, no matter the size. To date we really have not had a problem of too many CC or too little. Guess we have just been lucky so far. I think we have filleted 38 CC so far this year to date and have a half dozen in the holding pen to clean this morning. If we did not aggressively harvest I think they would become a problem. We are aggressively harvesting CC and HBG ahead of the hot season to reduce the bio load on the pond and give room for the remaining fish to grow. We have already harvested over 200 sunfish this year with very few of them actually being BG and mostly naturally occurring HBG and a few GSF. We return about all the male BG that we catch and the best looking female. That may change in the future but with our LMB population recovering and the SMB that we introduce to the main pond I will have to start paying more attention to BG recruitment.

With our increased LMB population I wonder if in a few years we will run out of CC recruitment. Wife really likes eating the CC. But we like LMB too so I don't have a problem one way or the other if the CC eventually go by the wayside. We will just start filleting LMB if they become plentiful. We are starting to occasionally catch last years spawn LMB. Been a few years since we could do that because the high population of BG/HBG were presumably preventing LMB spawns. We are getting LMB spawns now.

More information than you ask for!!!!

Snrub, that’s my main goal is to remove all the catfish I can to reduce the bio load for the gills and bass to grow. I need to figure out when I should harvest bluegill as well. So far I have not kept a single bluegill or bass from pond. I no it’s all a big balancing act and I’m leaning towards not harvesting any gills until they are primary fish in the pond. But not sure how I’m going to decide when to harvest them.

Kind of depends on what your goals are and how well your LMB do in controlling the YOY BG. Last year I had a good class of BG so was removing a lot of the female BG and returning the males to the water to get bigger. Only putting the best of the best females back for brood stock. The ones that had the characteristics I liked. This year I have been returning both male and female because of my increase in LMB I am catching not nearly as many small BG so I think I might need all the forage from the BG I can get.

Kind of depends on if you want to focus on catching large BG, or focus on catching large LMB, or focus on high catch rates (is what I like, I'm not a trophy angler), or focus on some sort of balance of LMB and BG fishing. Then once you know what you are managing towards there are hundreds of guys on here a whole lot smarter than I am about how to reach those goals.

I just mostly kind of bumble along and get lucky with what I do once in a while.

I will say that one of my accidents has worked out really well. I have about 5 acres of water total with it in several different ponds. 3 acres, 1 acre, another 1 acre and a couple of tiny ponds of 1/10th and 1/20th acres each. Of the 5 ponds they all have very different characteristics. They fish different, sometimes one pond biting a lot better than another. If I only had one pond I might think my management was success or failure based on that one pond. With 5 ponds that all act completely different even though they are right near each other I know that a lot of my actions had nothing to do with how some of the things turned out. One has weeds, another one doesn't. One is clear while another is muddy. One has a good algae bloom while another is too clear. My ponds are about like brothers and sisters. You can see a family resemblance but they all act different. I think that is really cool. If one is covered in nasty FA, some of the others will not be and I can enjoy them. So having multiple ponds has been one of my success stories. And the only reason I have them is because my location did not allow one bigger one. Another management by accident success story of mine.

Goal one is get rid of as many catfish as I can while I balance out the pond with Introducing other species. Then I’m kind of hoping to evolve the pond as my kids get older. Right now the fast action of 20-50 dink catfish is all they need on their Disney fishing poles. Hoping I can transition into a balanced bass bluegill fishery for the next stage and more bass centered as they get older. Not sure how feasible that is but that’s my perfect world scenario. I’d settle for healthy pond where you can catch nice bluegills and bass numbers with potential of a wall hanger or three.

8 acres is a pretty big BOW to make a big dent in adjusting the population by angling, but a person has to do what they can in that respect. I suspect your biggest gains will be in your management of predator species so they can control the excess fish population in the future.

Sounds like you are working in the right direction.

I used to be a merit badge councellor for the Fishing Merit Badge (and a few more)

Update and question. Update first. I have taken out almost 2,800 catfish this year. As of today the catfish I have filleted still have eggs (thought that was surprising for southern il.) also some catfish 11-12 inches had eggs not sure if that is normal or the catfish are stunted. I bass fished the pond for the first time to see how things were going. I caught 8 bass with a squarebill with one lap around the lake. Bass were 10-17 inches most being around 14. The bluegill are everywhere with all different classes and some real nice ones swimming around. All in all happy that the bass are present/growing and bluegills are doing well.

My main question is when do I start harvesting bluegills? I don’t want to exchange the catfish problem for bluegills. But I also don’t want any catfish young of the year to survive. I figure any bluegill I may take out wouldn’t be until fall. I might not touch them this year and stock 50-100 5-8 inch bass this fall while taking more catfish out. Then Bluegill harvest in spring of 2021. Not sure trying to get a game plan. Thanks

Do you have spawning containers for them? From what I gather, they won't spawn unless you add some "cave-like" structures for them.

Too my knowledge there isn’t any but I did not build the lake. There are lot of old tree stumps which they might spawn in. Not sure where they are spawning but they clearly did.

Steve, I tried it with the old time milk containers and a couple of barrels. Nada.