Thanks for the help! My favorite fish to fish for is the flathead catfish. But everything that I read on this site said not to use them. But that maybe for the smaller ponds that the majority of people have on this site. There is nothing that gets my blood a boiling as a reals drag taking out line not knowing how big the fish could be. I have people ask if I wanted flathead cats put in the lake and told them not to put them in. The lake is loaded with timber, so it would be ideal for cats.
Dang! If they are your favorite fish, you should have done this long ago. In my whole life, I have never seen a FH horror story in person. Where I have always fish for them I also caught other fish. Fishing in general seemed really good in these waters for LMB. A good example was my home town's municipal lake of ~300 acres. 50 years after construction, it was still producing northern LMB > 5 lbs. The lake has abundant BG, GSF, & LES along the edges and a substantial population of white crappie that top out around 10". What I can tell you is that we like FH in Oklahoma and FH were prevented from being a problem because we fished for and harvested them.
To be sure, if one were to catch 40 lbs of FH on a trotline and stock these fish in a 1 acre pond with intents of having a catch and release fishery ... well it would be a horror story for the resident fish and eventually the FH also. I think Forrest Gump said it well when he said "Stupid is as stupid does". We have to be reasonable. I don't think they would be a problem for you or your resident fish if you manage them through harvest. Your lake is big enough to be a viable fishery that includes FH catfish.
I do want to comment on one additional thing. It's not my intent that the FH become a financial burden to feed. If you have to feed them additionally then you are not managing their numbers in the way I would recommend. Let the lake support an appropriate standing weight of them. Harvest 25% of the projected standing weight annually. If you see they are negatively impacting your other fish, double up your harvest and knock them back to allow other fish to rebound. This is a doable scenario for you.
