Catfish Catastrophe

[squirrelhunter912]

Ok in a friend of mine's half an acre fishpond he had catfish in there gone to bed. Big ones two. Channel cats. Then one day he went to go fishin and couldnt catch anything! There are absolutely no more catfish in there and its all of a sudden. The bream are still there but no catfish. He did see an otter come out of his pond but they dont eat fish without scales. How did this happen?

[boohoo222]

sounds like someone got them out one night

[StikR]

who said otter don't eat fish w/o scales? I think that is your problem. Look around the pond in the bushes for catfish heads

[squirrelhunter912]

Originally Posted by StikR

who said otter don't eat fish w/o scales? I think that is your problem. Look around the pond in the bushes for catfish heads

well even if they ate em why didnt they get the bream?

[groundhawg]

Originally Posted by squirrelhunter912

well even if they ate em why didnt they get the bream?

Oh they will. Just give them a bit more time.

[jkkj]

If he only went to fish one time and could not catch any, that does not mean they are not there...I have a 3/4 acre pond and some days you cant make em bite but I know they are there...

[dawg2]

Originally Posted by squirrelhunter912

Ok in a friend of mine's half an acre fishpond he had catfish in there gone to bed. Big ones two. Channel cats. Then one day he went to go fishin and couldnt catch anything! There are absolutely no more catfish in there and its all of a sudden. The bream are still there but no catfish. He did see an otter come out of his pond but they dont eat fish without scales. How did this happen?

Who told you that??? If you have an otter, they will clean out a 1/2 acre pond. They will eat young beavers, muskrats and even ducks. They are voracious.

[xs5875]

How big are the bream? Reverse predation?lol

[squirrelhunter912]

the catfish havent bitten in a long time the bream have overpopulated

[fishbasket]

channel cat fish needs something to get in for the eggs to hatch like an old hollow stump or something artificial, eggs need moving water like the movement caused by the tail or flowing water and he could have caught them all

[little rascal]

channel cat fish needs something to get in for the eggs to hatch like an old hollow stump or something artificial

what i was always told too. Always wondered why in some ponds when i was a kid, you would see old drums and old washing machine tubs laying on the bottom. It was for the catfish i reckon. My pond had nothing like that in it for years, the catfish were actually caught out, but we always still had a few big ones in there. We rolled a huge tractor tire in there and some may have used it, we caught some fingerling's in the spillway once, guess some catfish layed eggs ,but the eggs went thru the dam pipe. I re-stocked a few years ago with 150 10-12" channel cats, we were covered up in thumb sized bream, well the catfish have slimmed down the bream population now. However sometimes I too think my catfish have dissappeared as they just don't bite some days. If they have plenty of forage they will be harder to get to bite. Try this, start throwing a couple of cups of dry dog food from the same location every couple of days from warm up thru summer. If they are in there, they will come. I have some monsters, that are truly fun to watch as they walk on top with whiskers sticking out, gobbling up the dog food.

[BowArrow]

You probably want get any reproduction of channel cat in a pond and if you did the big cats would eat them. If you keep what you catch, you will remove all of them from the pond. Buy some more small channel cats and start over. Feed them floating catfish food and you can get a good idea of how many you have in the pond. I had 3000 channels in a one acre pond and enjoyed feeding them. I feed them daily and they would eat out of my hand.

[j_seph]

Ah Ha, that is why BooHoo and Sultan left so early in the morning Saturday.