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.
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.
