Tire tip for catfish in ponds

[o&itw]

I never saw this mentioned on here, so I though I would throw it out to anyone that is interested.

There are a lot of farm pounds around the Midwest that are stocked with channel catfish (among other things). One of the problems with many of them is that the channel cat won't reproduce. This is usually a problem of them having a proper place to spawn.

When I was young, I remember my dad trying to sink hollow logs etc in the pond, but with no luck. The pond was an acre or two, and he finally decide that maybe it was too small. Years later, I happened to live next to a farm which had ponds, 1/4 the size of ours with all kinds of channel cats. The farmer told my kids they were welcome to fish it any time, as it was getting overrun with too many small catfish. I figured they were mud cat (yellow belly) which tend to take over some farm ponds, taste bad, and hardly ever make it to a pound. Surprisingly, they were channel cat, so I asked him how he got them to reproduce so well when no one else was having any luck.

He said he learned the idea from another guy, and when he built the pond he laid about 25 old tractor and truck tires in the bottom (he owned a tire store)
It seemed to work, so I collected some old tractor (works best) and semi tires from places wanting to get rid of them and took them down to my dads pond (He had restocked the catfish for or five times by then). His current crop of catfish were all 4-5 lbs. I had a little trouble sinking them as they are just slightly denser than water and the air was hard to get out of the upper curve. heh, next time I drilled some holes in one side (upper when placing) so the would sink easy.

Within a couple of years the catfish were reproducing great, even though it was a much larger pond and I only sank about 10.

[Acer Rubrum]

Good tip, I am gonna remember that.

[pheasantplucker]

What did the female catfish say to the male catfish? "Not tonight dear, I'm too 'tired' !"

[sirquack]

Originally Posted by pheasantplucker

What did the female catfish say to the male catfish? "Not tonight dear, I'm too 'tired' !"

[Rick]

Originally Posted by pheasantplucker

What did the female catfish say to the male catfish? "Not tonight dear, I'm too 'tired' !"

Male to female:

Could you put on that black tube top I like?

You look Radial tonight.

[KMA1]

Around here, a lot of pond owners use 35 gallon barrels with one open end. But the tires will last a heck of a lot longer.

[ldc]

We did a similar thing for trout in a spring fed pond in NY State. The kingfishers were getting all the fry, so we put 2-3ft pieces of pipe on the bottom for the fry to hide in when they felt/saw the birds' shadows. It worked, too.