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Old 05-12-10, 11:08 PM   #1
66KingFisher
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Default Catfish ate all the bass!

Ok, I gotta get some opinions on this......I met with a guy this afternoon to talk about doing some custom airbrush work on his motorcycle, and his home ended up being across the street from a nice looking neighborhood pond of about 5 acres or so in size, that i've had my eye on for awhile, so I mentioned that I enjoyed catch & release bassfishin and would it be ok if I walked the bank and wet a hook one evening? He proceeded to tell me that nobody was allowed to fish it without a neighborhood home owner present with them.....But, then he begins to tell me that there are NO bass left in this pond because the catfish took over and have reduced the bass population to nothing basicly. "There used to be some nice bass in there, but the cats ate'm all" He say's.

Naturally I think to myself "Whatever....Ya'll just don't know how to catch'm"...lol.....But after I left, I got to wondering...."Is that even possible"....could some big cats wipe out all the bass in a pond? Whats your take?

Personally, I think it was his way of saying "No, you can't fish it" without saying that....lol. But......if he wants me to do a custom paintjob for him he might have to let me have a go as part of the price.
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Old 05-12-10, 11:17 PM   #2
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YES!! YES!! YES IT SI POSSIBLE AND IT DOES HAPPEN! A catfish will eat 10 times it's weight in bass fingerlings a day. And vice versa. So if oyu are wanting a BASS pond, stock it with bream first then the bass after the bream are stablized. if you want a cat pond. stock it with cats only and feed em dog food. AND NEVER, EVER put any crappie in either. they will overpopulate and take over and you'll never get em all out unless you drain the pond and kill em. Seen this happen to at least a dozen of the ponds that i grew up fishing as a kid.
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Old 05-13-10, 06:46 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bamabassman View Post
YES!! YES!! YES IT SI POSSIBLE AND IT DOES HAPPEN! A catfish will eat 10 times it's weight in bass fingerlings a day. And vice versa. So if oyu are wanting a BASS pond, stock it with bream first then the bass after the bream are stablized. if you want a cat pond. stock it with cats only and feed em dog food. AND NEVER, EVER put any crappie in either. they will overpopulate and take over and you'll never get em all out unless you drain the pond and kill em. Seen this happen to at least a dozen of the ponds that i grew up fishing as a kid.
Catfish will eat the bass eggs as well. I agree with what you said.
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Old 05-13-10, 03:38 PM   #4
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Could they??? Possibly but would depend on the amount of cover for the fish to hide in. More cover less likely. Bass are pretty quick and hide pretty good.
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Old 05-13-10, 03:46 PM   #5
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I guess it's possible that catfish would eat a large amount of fingerlings. I would think the pond would have to be over ran with large cats though for them to wipe out the bass population. Plus, if there used to be some "nice bass" in the pond shouldn't they still be there? I would think a bass would outgrow eating size for all but the largest cats pretty quickly.
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Old 05-13-10, 04:08 PM   #6
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I had a guy tell me that wizards casted black magic against the bass in his pond

I think your good with this sentence.

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Naturally I think to myself "Whatever....Ya'll just don't know how to catch'm"...
I gurantee you that if there were good bass in there,they're most likely still there...Unless the neighborhood had a fish fry.
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Old 05-13-10, 05:30 PM   #7
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Must be a lot of big cats for that! I'd fish it, find out yer self!

And I agree with bama, about stocking ponds, my dad had a lake stocking business when he was younger.
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Old 05-13-10, 06:18 PM   #8
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the catfish DO eat the fry, they eat the other baitfish too. they eat the eggs as well. they are bottom feeders, yes, but if you were to eat all the food in will starve. the pond what is the bass gonna eat? so they will starve. right? so if oyu add catfish to a bass pond, and trust me because i have seen this happen over and over, the bass will fade out. may take a while, but they will fade out.
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Old 05-13-10, 07:37 PM   #9
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Yep, I firmly believe it happens. Years back I was fishing a big stock tank with a buddy of mine outside of Ft. Worth. GORGEOUS, bassy looking water. Threw the tackle box and nothing. By buddy, on the other hand, caught at least 100 catfish out of it while we were fishing it.
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Old 05-13-10, 08:59 PM   #10
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My buddy's mom lives on a little 1-acre at best pond...there are dozens of blue catfish in it , many over 20 lbs...at least one over 40 lbs. We catch many 3 lb + bass, but I never see any juvenile bass. I believe between the 14" crappie and the hawg cats rolling around in there, the bass don't have much success spawning.

It's a good thing the 74 lb blue cat he put in there died and floated up....otherwise, there might not even be any 5 lb bass hehe.
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Old 05-14-10, 07:24 AM   #11
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When I was a kid we had catfish in our ponds with bass & bream. The catfish we had could not reproduce and we did not put that many in about a 7 acre pond. The bigger problem was when several people decided to put White Amurs in the pond and we had a drought.
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Old 05-14-10, 08:09 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bamabassman View Post
YES!! YES!! YES IT SI POSSIBLE AND IT DOES HAPPEN! A catfish will eat 10 times it's weight in bass fingerlings a day. And vice versa. So if oyu are wanting a BASS pond, stock it with bream first then the bass after the bream are stablized. if you want a cat pond. stock it with cats only and feed em dog food. AND NEVER, EVER put any crappie in either. they will overpopulate and take over and you'll never get em all out unless you drain the pond and kill em. Seen this happen to at least a dozen of the ponds that i grew up fishing as a kid.
So a 9lb catfish will eat 90lbs of fingerlings a day???
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Old 05-14-10, 08:21 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WaffleJaw View Post
I gurantee you that if there were good bass in there,they're most likely still there...Unless the neighborhood had a fish fry.
I completely agree, unless they were HUGE cats, I don't think they'd be eating good sized bass. If there's too many cats, it's very likely they eat all or nearly all the bass fry. But if there were big bass in there before, they probably are still there, unless like waffle said, the neighbors kept them all and ate them.

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Old 05-14-10, 11:02 AM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AUFred View Post
When I was a kid we had catfish in our ponds with bass & bream. The catfish we had could not reproduce and we did not put that many in about a 7 acre pond. The bigger problem was when several people decided to put White Amurs in the pond and we had a drought.
So were the catfish sterile or was it they just didnt have the cover they felt comfortable reproducing in? I've heard that catfish are very picky where they like to hide their eggs and they will refuse to spawn if they cannot find a place that they are comfortable that other catfish can't find. We stock our farm ponds with Bass, Catfish, Crappie, Bream, and regularly supplument the pond with fathead minnows for food along with 5 sterile carp to keep algae levels down. We haven't ever had a problem with the catfish eating the bass fingerlings because the catfish won't spawn, and the numbers of fingerlings the catfish eat aren't enough to affect the bass spawn.

If the proper cover is available for the catfish, I could see them being a problem overpopulating and overwhelming the bass population.

I've also read in some of my older textbooks that catfish shouldn't be a problem if the frog population in the pond is healthy, because the tadpoles and eggs provide a favorite food of catfish.
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Old 05-14-10, 11:07 AM   #15
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I think you nailed it about the cover TN. I don't know what the exact conditions are for catfish to spawn but if they aren't met they won't spawn. I know of a pond that had cats in it 30 years ago that was never restocked and now doesn't have any and they weren't fished out, they died off. A neighborhood pond like this could have also been over stocked with catfish, or at least an unhealthy balance of predator/prey species.
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Old 05-14-10, 12:17 PM   #16
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I know a few things about cats.

Blue cats and flatheads will eat ducks/bass and anything they can.
Bullhead will eat eggs and babys but bass will eat there fry too.

Blues grow so fast that they will become top preditor.
Flatheads grow slow but are night eaters and will co-exist in most ponds.

Blues spawn huge numbers. Flats not so much.

Bullhead even less.

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Old 05-14-10, 05:05 PM   #17
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As far as catfish eating bass fry or even eating bass themselves...........no arguement here. But I seriously doubt that catfish destroyed the bass poplulation in any body of water. I still do a little pond fishing once in a while and several of the ponds that I have permission to fish have a great catfish population and bass population. A few of the ponds have even been used in the past to raise trophy catfish and there are some giants in them, but the bass are doing great themselves.

I think this guy was just trying to keep you from fishing the pond, or maybe he doesn't know that much about fishing and is just wrong in his assumptions.
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Old 05-14-10, 05:24 PM   #18
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Quote:
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So were the catfish sterile or was it they just didnt have the cover they felt comfortable reproducing in? I've heard that catfish are very picky where they like to hide their eggs and they will refuse to spawn if they cannot find a place that they are comfortable that other catfish can't find. We stock our farm ponds with Bass, Catfish, Crappie, Bream, and regularly supplument the pond with fathead minnows for food along with 5 sterile carp to keep algae levels down. We haven't ever had a problem with the catfish eating the bass fingerlings because the catfish won't spawn, and the numbers of fingerlings the catfish eat aren't enough to affect the bass spawn.

If the proper cover is available for the catfish, I could see them being a problem overpopulating and overwhelming the bass population.

I've also read in some of my older textbooks that catfish shouldn't be a problem if the frog population in the pond is healthy, because the tadpoles and eggs provide a favorite food of catfish.
Not sure the type catfish we had. Without running water they could not spawn. Unfortunately in the pond several people put 5 to 10 carp in. At one point we probably had 50 in that pond. When they got large they kept the water almost churning. They were fun to catch though. They screwed up the bass fishing because not only were the carp sterile they went through the spring ritual making beds. The bass could not bed for the carp.
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Old 05-14-10, 06:18 PM   #19
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I'm enjoying the response this subject is getting.....So I want to throw this into the mix.

Theres a nearby 200 acre lake(or bigarse pond)that I fish more than anywhere else. It was built in 57 and the Arkansas fish and game use a large section near the dam as a fish hatchery. During the summer they raise catfish of all species, and during the winter they raise trout.
This has been going on for years.....To the locals, this little lake is well known for its big cat population, and i'm not just talking numbers i'm talking size too....theres been several Blue cats over 70lbs come out of it, and I wouldn't normally think you'd find blues in a small body of water such as this, but because of the hatchery that would make sense to me.....I would also assume there's a good chance of there always being a continual amount of "Restocking" going on whether its on purpose or not...if you know what I mean? I know bad storms reek havoc with their cages at times, and last years tornado ripped up most of their cages and released everything into the lake.....Now on top of this regular restocking, throw in regular "feedings" and you've got some serious "catering to cats" going on in a relatively small body of water....So you'd think the place would be nothing but a catfish farm.

Yet, I catch bass almost every time I go, and most of what I've caught has been in the 3# range and i'm all the time hearing of a 5-6 being taken.....My fishing buddy loves to panfish and along with catching alot of small cats he catches alot of nice sized bream and warmouths......So, if a small body body of water could be overrun by a dominate species such as a catfish, it would seem like this little lake would be a prime candidate for that to happen, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Granted 200 acres of water is not a 5 acre neighborhood pond so I dunno....maybe the potential for that to happen is much greater in small body of water like a pond? It be cool to know what a fisheries biologist might say on the subject....We got any of those here?
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Old 05-14-10, 06:51 PM   #20
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It be cool to know what a fisheries biologist might say on the subject....We got any of those here?
Bite your tongue!!!!
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Old 05-14-10, 08:13 PM   #21
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bassman......this is what a conservation fella told me. i was going to have a pond when i had 10 acres in south bama. i know it sounds extreme, but i am only repeating what i was told. i too thought about what you are meaning, doesn't seem logical. but again..only saying what i was told.
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