A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

1st Catfish Harvest

Well, it was time to harvest. My son and his 5 children were here on Sunday. My catfish are a little over 1 year old and we harvested 7 cats.

I put them in a drum with fresh water for about 15 mins and they were very good. I was very surprised at how white the meat was and lite and clean tasting they were.

Aquaponics surprised me again.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on July 11, 2013 at 9:39am

As with many animals flavor has much more to do with what the animal eats, the quality of it's environment and how it is processed more than the particular type of fish it is.

The high water quality we generally keep in our aquaponics systems as well as the fact that you can go from living fish to cleaning it and cooking it or freezing it in a matter of minutes means you don't have a fish that had to suffocate in with a truck full of other fish being transported from the farm to the processing plant or a fish that was sloshing around all day in the ice chest or holding tank in the boat until you get back to dock to clean it.

Biggest complaint some people might have about aquaponic catfish over wild caught catfish is that perhaps it is so mild (dang it isn't fishy at all.)

In fact when growing both catfish and tilapia and they were eating the same feed, only difference in the meat (other than portion of it from each fish) was that if you over cook catfish it gets dense while if you overcook tilapia it gets dry and stringy.

Permalink Reply by Dan Ponton on July 12, 2013 at 8:46am

A lot of fresh water fish I have caught and eaten in the past tasted like muddy water which is why I prefer salt water fish. You are correct that it depends on the environment they live in.

being able to keep them alive and flush them out helped some also. Next time I will flush them in well water not city water and see if that affects the flavor.

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Ihara on July 14, 2013 at 9:42pm

Dan,

how big are your cats (channel, right?) after a year?

did you feed only with pellet, or did you feed with natural foods as well?

my cats are getting live redworms and fresh dead anchovies, and I'm hoping that this diet will improve their flavor as well as their growth rate.

Permalink Reply by Dan Ponton on July 15, 2013 at 6:36am

Almost exclusively fish pellets, 3-4 times I gave them worms. They were not large, 1-1 1/2 lbs. I got them as fingerling and I had them in with gold fish which grew like crazy but I think the gold fish were eating most of the food. I am starting to raise night crawlers to feed the cats.

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on July 15, 2013 at 8:34pm

1-1 1/2 lb is a respectable harvest size for channel catfish and it is the size range that I believe most farmed catfish are raised to. However it is quite possible in a warm climate like FL to raise channel catfish to 3 lb or sometimes more in 12 months under good water conditions and heavy feeding.