Hey all, im an avid fisherman, family pond here, about 1 1/2 acre feet pond with channels, and some perch, no bass yet, later this year will stock some bass. Over the last month or so, having a hard time catching some cats out there with a simple trotline, we used cut perch, chicken gizzards, hearts, even a wild hog i killed couple weeks ago, seems these fish are not very hungry yet! anyone else have this similar problem with their pond also? Worms are a waste of time, perch in the middle of tank are waiting when we bait the lines. Even at sundown bait the one line about 60 hooks or so, seems all we are feeding them and the turtles, turtle dissapear at night, saw one night a coon trying get my bait form the edge of the bank, a 12ga took care of him, thought about cutting him up for bait, but na,,,,,, any suggestions...... water is starting to warm now. Pond has a natural spring in the middle, and when its full its 13' deep in the middle..... thought about a trap, im in a shop where we could fab up a simple fish trap, but not now, i'd rather have some fun with family first before we cheat!......

carry on with the comments....will stay posted here.......

Im near the Lake Somerville area, 10miles from Brenham TX......


cheers to all..... hogflyer....

Maybe try some cut carp. Should do the job.

Live bluegill or live goldfish are hard to beat for farm pond cats

Any chance you don't have as many catfish in the pond as you think?

They might have flown the coop if it overflowed a few times.

Well, yes the pond has overflowed couple times this past spring, dont think we lost that many, guess its possible. Having some friend coming down next weekend about 8 will have lines in so i will find out more.

The cut carp is good idea, have a cousin outside of LaGrange who fishes the colorado only and has not problem catching them there, could try some and see what gives. Guys at work says try punch bait, never used it may be another avenue to go. Also switching some of the 3/0, and 4/0 hooks im using, to a smaller treble hook, see if i can snag some of them turtles.


thanks....

You would be surprised at how many you can lose to an overflow. Had a pond stocked with cats a number of years ago and stretched chicken wire across the overflow. Any time we would get to the point of overflow the cats would be stacked up in front of that chicken wire. Didn't matter if it was 6" or 6'over they would stack up.

For the turtles, build a trap. (plans available on the web). If you don't check a submerged trap for a day or two, they are very docile when you are ready to remove them from the trap.

Small hooks and rotten meat for the turtles. As far as the cats go, there's tons of bait recipes on the net. One of then is titled, this will make you throw up, but it works. The smell alone will cause you to retch but it catches.

I've had my best luck using dipbait on a natural sponge. The problem I've had with the baits you mentioned were bullheads. I agree with Mckinney that live 'gills are good bait. You might try one fished on the bottom and also one under a float.

Tank Cats can be finicky. If you feed them fish food, I would recommend not feeding them for a day or two before fishing. I like to free line large shiners or gold fish. I've had luck on Sureshot also. Grasshoppers work too. Just have to keep everything else off of them. Don't rule out nightcrawlers in a stock tank either. Good luck.

Garlic/cheese dough bait under a slip cork set about a foot or so off of bottom. Turtles don't much care for garlic and neither do perch. Trotline at night set the hooks high about a foot below surface.
Cats love garlic.

I have found that when fishing tanks/ponds the first move most people make is to cast out to the middle for the big one in deer water etc... I have personally found that fishing near the bank has produced a much larger number of fish!

I've caught my best fish in tanks using what was native to the tank. Also it seems most small water fish can be particular about presentation. the only real farm pond fishing I ever did was on about a 2 or 3ac tank. we'd fish with all sorts of baits, even trotlines...never caught all that many. would catch perch and bullheads. finaly seemed like we did our best using cut perch from the tank fished on the bottom on light tackle. finally caught some of the bigger channels that we knew were there.

Grand Dad had a farm pond. Only thing they would eat were tadpoles.