How do you stock catfish in small pond? Particularly one that’s not easily accessed from the road or driveway?
Most pond stocking companies offer delivery services for their fish, and have big hoses and tanks to get the fish into your pond. But because our recent batch of twenty five, 8-10″channel catfish was such a small order (they only cost $20), delivery wasn’t really an option. Luckily, the fish company is able to fill up some heavy duty plastic bags with water, and some extra O2. This gives you plenty of time for a short drive, and doesn’t stress the fish out too much in the process.
Carrying catfish in a plastic bag down to the pond
Once we got home, it was a simple matter of dumping out some of the excess water and then lugging a big ole pile catfish over my shoulder and down to the pond. The fish people had left their tanks open all night, and the water was nice and cold, so we didn’t bother acclimating the fish to our pond water. We just dumped them out.
almost there…
Free to grow and eventually turn into catfish sandwiches
All in all, a very simple chore, very doable for 1 person. each bag had about 12 catfish in it, so it took 2 trips (about 10 minutes). So,if your thinking about stocking your small pond with fish, be they catfish, bluegill, or bass, don’t worry about bagging them up and bringing them if you cant find someone to deliver them. This would work even better with smaller sized fish, and you could probably stock a decent sized pond entirely with bagged fish if you planned it carefully.
We only added the 25 larger catfish because our pond is in pretty good balance, with a somewhat high population of small bluegills and some larger bass.They seem to doing well, its hard to tell, but we haven’t seen any floaters since the pond was stocked 3 days ago.