I didn't recommend against catfish out of limited experience; the negatives I described are phenomenons I have personally witnessed dozens of times over twenty-eight years of pond management, and which have also been witnessed many times by many other pond professionals. I can name pond consultants from Nebraska to West Virginia to Indiana to Georgia to Texas that have witnessed the phenomenon, for instance, of catfish becoming hook-shy; there was even a presentation on the tendency of catfish to become hook-shy at a pond management conference held earlier this month at the Hilton Dallas. So, there is scientific research that corroborates my observation.

As to the idea that it's just a matter of feeding more: here again, my experience is that it just doesn't work that way. Large channels of ten-plus pounds not only hog the food, but they will aggressively intimidate bluegill away from the food by slapping their tails, rolling, etc. while they are eating. And they don't just eat for five minutes and then leave the rest to the bluegill; I have seen them follow drifting pellets for half an hour and more. If one is utilizing an automatic feeder to get the feed to the fish - which is far and away more effective than hand feeding for growing trophy bluegill since they need to be fed multiple times a day for optimum growth - you can't feed enough to feed a handful of large channels all they want and still get a proper amount of food to the bluegill, because you'd have to set the timer to throw for thirty seconds and you'd go through $500 worth of feed in a month.