Originally Posted by Jim Wetzel
I have made CC (female) x BC (male) hybrids. Males need to be injected as well, and more than on dose per fish. A lot of females are duds and you will have to kill male to get sufficient milt. You will need several fish of each sex to increase odds of a good spawn. If your first go at this, I suggest having pure channels spawn naturally in a small pond with only a few pairs of broodfish, then rear fingerlings there to get a handle on how to feed and otherwise manage them.


We have also incubated broods / egg masses by placing them in a shaded bucket which gets a steady flow of water pumped through it from a neighboring pond. Then fry are released into a tank getting similar flow where they are kept until ready to be stocked into a fishless pond.

We have Osage Catfisheries with BC in Missouri, although you will pay a lot more for shipping than you will for fish themselves, and you may have trouble getting 8-lb plus male BC needed.

This is excellent information, thank you. Do the males need to be injected if you plan on strip-spawning the female? I was under the impression that the males stayed fertile year-round, and that you only need to inject the females to mature the eggs. If that's incorrect, then I may need to adjust my plan. The dosage rates are 0.5mL per 1kg (2.2lbs.) of body weight. A 6.6lb fish would need a dose of 1.5mL. Getting broodfish isn't a problem, I plan on catching them myself. The trouble I may have is catching some small enough to transport home, lol. This past weekend I caught 4 Blues... the smallest was around 7 pounds, and the others were 12, 18 and 28. I don't mind taking a few "eater" size fish home to experiment on, but I wouldn't want to take anything more than 10-12 pounds. A 10lb fish would need a 2.3mL dose of Ovaprim, which would still give me a few tries on other fish if it doesn't work. Blue Catfish become sexually mature at around 24" which is 4.7 pounds on the weight/length conversion chart. Channel Cats can spawn as early as 2 pounds, so maybe it would be wise to experiment on CC first, since it gives me better usage of the Ovaprim. I just really don't want CC since every fish supplier around here has them.

How successful was your first try? Have you done this type of thing before?

"In the age of information, ignorance is a choice." - Donny Miller