Wife fished our pond for first time today, we stocked with channel cats a yr ago along with other fish. Didn't stock yellows but have them now, guess they show up on bird feet or some other means. We had pond built and no other ponds that overflow into it and no creek coming in. Bums me out having them but I guess the kids won't care.

Get you a couple of yellowcats and put in there. They will control the bullheads.

I expect that they acme from the hatchery.

+1 on the yellow cats cleaning them out.The mud cat didn't come from the fish hatchery.They just fall out of the sky. They will take over a tank if nothing is done.

Did you stock any bass and/or sunfish (bluegill)?

I doubt you got yellow bullheads from the hatchery. They tend to be really good at moving into new territories. Most folks would be surprised, but it does not take more than a half inch or so of water depth for these to swim, literally for miles and uphill, to get into new ponds. A prolonged heavy rainy period is all it takes for yellow bullheads to swim out of their creek and into a pond three miles away across nothing but woods or pasture. Add to that things like kingfishers whose natural habit is to catch, carry and stock fish into ponds, and it is truly difficult to find any pond having water in it for more than a few months, with no fish.

Anyhow, yellow cat (flathead catfish) will eat the bullheads and pretty much anything else smaller than them in the pond. If the pond has a balanced population of bass and sunfish then the bullheads will not get too populous and will grow to good sizes. Putting yellow cat into such a pond will screw it up worse than the bullheads.

If no bass and sunfish, adding one or two yellow cats might help or a big gar.

The main problem is if there are no natural predators, then the bullheads will overpopulate the pond, not grow well, and make the pond muddy. In that case....rotenone and start over or just live with them.

You and the kids catch all the mudcats you can and use them for yellow cat bait. Heck, you can probably sell them to folks wanting bait for their river lines.

I wouldn't put Flatheads in your pond. They don't discriminate and will eat any and all fish in a small pond. If you have a good healthy population of Bass they will eat and feed on the Bullheads as well as the Bluegills. Lots of small Bullheads IMHO is always an indicator of an unhealthy or out of balance Bass population. Larger Bullheads 9-15 inches from clean ponds taste as good as any Channel Cat.

I needa save this pic for some folks......'specially the ones what says I'm crazy for stocking bullheads in my trophy bass fisheries.

Yes indeedy bass do eat bullheads and like I said before, if you got a lot of bullheads, especially as mentioned here above, lots of small ones, usually indicates a problem. Bass keep bullheads in check unless the water done got so muddy they can't see to eat 'em. Where bullheads are not overpopulous, they tend to be large. Especially the yellow bullheads we got around here. The black bullheads (tell by lookin' at the whiskers-if they's black its a black bullhead) don't get quite as big.

Them in the picture looks like brown bullheads to me. I got some like that from Alabamy once. They were pinto painted brown bullheads.

Even though they are spiny, the strong stomach acids and enzymes in the bass takes the points off quickly, and in the scheme of things are hardly spinier than a bluegill or a tilapia.

Yes Sir, "a picture is worth a thousand words." A healthy Bass population will keep them in check for sure and the ones that do survive usually turn into JUMBO-SIZE Bullheads. The White Catfish is the largest Bullhead and has the potential to get up to 20 pounds. Yellow Bullheads can get over 5lbs. The Black & Brown Bullhead Catfish have the potential to get up to 10 pounds, although very few do.

Texas basically has two types of Bully's. The Black and the Yellow Bullhead.
TPWD-Black Bullhead Catfish: http://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/species/bigfish/
TPWD-Yellow Bullhead Catfish: http://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/species/ybh/

National Freshwater Fish Hall of Fame
Black Bullhead 8Lbs 15Ozs - Sturgis Pond in Michigan in 1987: Just 1 ounce shy of 9Lbs

IGFA Records
Black Bullhead Cat 8Lbs 2ozs- Massapequa Lake, Long Island, New York - Frank Piazza
Brown Bullhead Cat 7Lbs 6ozs - Mahopac Lake, New York State - Glenn Collacuro
Yellow Bullhead Cat 6Lbs 6ozs - Old Drexel Lake, Drexel Mo. - John Irvin
White Bullhead Cat 19Lbs 5ozs - Oakdale, CA - Russell D. Price

Possible Future Records?
Flat Bullhead Cat?
Snail Bullhead Cat ?
Spotted Bullhead Cat?

The Snail, Flat, and Spotted Bullhead haven't been as widely stocked as the other 4 types of Bullheads. They remain confined to a few states in the southeast. Very few people know how to identify them properly. I suspect that's why no records are kept for them? The Flat & Snail Bullhead have the potential to get as large as the Black and Brown Bullhead. The Spotted's on the other hand rarely get over 12 inches.

There are 7 kinds of Bullhead Catfish that swim in U.S. waters. I have 8 listed. Two types of Brown Bullheads are listed. The Brown Bullhead Sub-species "Speckled Cat" is considered a southern variant of the Brown Bullhead. All 7 are of interest to anglers and grow to harvestable size.




When Largemouth Bass, Hybrid Bass "WIPERS", Crappie, and Sunfish are managed properly in ponds and small lakes this is what the Bullhead Catfish will look like.



Yep, some of those are Brown Bulls in the gullets of those Bucketmouth Bass. Some are Blacks and 1 is a Yellow. 3 of them are actually small Channel Catfish.

Those Southern Brown Bullhead Catfish "Speckled Cats" your talking about are neat looking dudes! I bet those Alabamy Bully's looked something like these?




This is a large SNAIL BULLHEAD CATFISH caught recently from the Catawba River in South Carolina.

In a very large bass fishing lake of over 600 acres, we'd trap yellow bullheads in hoop nets. We got paid by the pound to remove them. Some days catching five hundred pounds of 1 to 3 pounders or more and sell them by the roadside in Houston for a buck a pound (when channel cat was priced at $0.50/pound). All gone in half hour or less.

Good work when you can get it, double dipping, paid to fish then sell the fish.

Now I'm just a biologist and have been a dedicate "lumper" all my life but....

I done looked it up best as I can and I take extreme exception to the taxonomy of the Ictalurid family that places a forked tailed white catfish in the same genus as the round tailed bullheads (Ameiurus) and not in the forked tailed Ictaluris with channel and blue catfish.

I also know for a fact that white catfish have been successfully hybridized with both channel and blue catfish but never with any of the bullheads.

The literature search also yielded that the Order (Siluriformes) is still being sorted out by taxonomists.

Then one day one of the guys brings in a madtom.....

A White Catfish is a Bullhead. It's in the genus Ameiurus(BULLHEAD). All North American Catfish are from the same Ictaluridae family. The genus (Ameiurus) is shared by all Bullheads while the other catfish species have a different genus.A White Cats caudal fin is more accurately described as being a fantail, rather than a forktail. They use to be a popular fish in the 70's and 80's with "pay" lake owners & fishermen before everthing became about MONSTER CATFISH. Back then they were valued and popular with "pay lake owners" because they were easy to produce or propagate. Being a Bullhead, White Cats are prolific nest spawners. They can grow extremely fast, especially in the winter months. They can even outpace Channel Catfish in ideal conditions for the first 2-3 years of life. They're eager biters day or night, and can be caught year round. Like all Bullheads they can tolerate rough handling, crowded conditions,and very low oxygen content in water. The best part of all is they are very fine tablefare!

3.1 Catfish hybridization: "24 different hybrid types have been produced from these 7 common species of freshwater catfish: Gravid Channel Catfish, Ictalurus punctatus; White Catfish, Ictalurus catus; Blue Catfish, Ictalurus furcatus; Flathead Catfish, Pylodictus olivaris; Black Bullhead Catfish, Ictalurus melas; Yellow Bullhead Catfish, Ictalurus natalis; and Brown Bullhead Catfish, Ictalurus nebulosus. Based on observations to date, it's predicted that the remaining hybrid catfishes can be produced except possibly those involving the female Flathead Catfish. All attempts to produce hybrids from eggs of Flathead Catfish and sperm from any of the 6 species of catfish resulted in infertile eggs or eggs which disintegrated a few days after apparently being fertilized. However, the sperm from Flathead Catfish was used successfully to fertilize the eggs of the other catfishes."
For more info: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/b3310e/B3310E11.htm

I remember catching white catfish in Connecticut and Massachusetts. You wouldn't get them in the mucky backwaters and ponds that you'd regularly catch brown bullheads in, but they were more tolerant of stagnant water than channel cats (which in New England were basically restricted to the Connecticut River and its bigger tributaries). I'd also catch white cats in river mouths in tidal brackish water off estuary channels while chunking bait for striped bass and bluefish.

Someone described white catfish habits as being intermediate between bullheads and the larger true catfish species, that seems about right. You're right about their being more closely related to bullheads, however.

"3.1 Catfish hybridization: "24 different hybrid types have been produced from these 7 common species of freshwater catfish: Gravid Channel Catfish, Ictalurus punctatus; White Catfish, Ictalurus catus; Blue Catfish, Ictalurus furcatus; Flathead Catfish, Pylodictus olivaris; Black Bullhead Catfish, Ictalurus melas; Yellow Bullhead Catfish, Ictalurus natalis; and Brown Bullhead Catfish, Ictalurus nebulosus. Based on observations to date, it's predicted that the remaining hybrid catfishes can be produced except possibly those involving the female Flathead Catfish. All attempts to produce hybrids from eggs of Flathead Catfish and sperm from any of the 6 species of catfish resulted in infertile eggs or eggs which disintegrated a few days after apparently being fertilized. However, the sperm from Flathead Catfish was used successfully to fertilize the eggs of the other catfishes."
For more info: http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/b3310e/B3310E11.htm" quote from above.

I find it even more interesting that the FAO taxonomic descriptions place all the bullheads in the same group (Genus) as the channel and blue catfish, Ictalurus, not recognizing the separation into two Genera. This and successful hybridization of group members pretty much across the board suggests a closer, rather than more distant, phylogenetic relationship with the white catfish being the "bridge" species of the group.

Long ago and behind the Pine Curtain, I helped develope one of the strains of blue catfish (D&B) now being used to produce a large majority of commercial stock for the US market. Over half of which is now the hybrid of Male Blue Catfish X Female Channel Catfish. A lot of what is sold to stock ponds is now this hybrid as well.

Interesting stuff Goldeneye.

However, I've run into and stocked white(forked tail) channel cats. Since I've never segregated them, I have no idea whether the trait is or can be inherited.

I believe what your talking about Dave are Albino Channel Catfish, which are quite different than White Catfish. White Catfish are a native of the eastern coastal states. Picture a fish with the proportions of a brown bullhead, the bluish-silver coloration of a Blue Cat, and a tail when spread widely apart resembles a fantail, or when relaxed resembles a slightly forktail, and there you have a White Catfish. Their ability to adapt and reproduce in a variety of water conditions has appealed to some fishery managers trying to stretch budgets.