While the flathead eats only live fish, including other flatheads, the channel cat thrives on hatchery pellets. Each year the DNR raises about 30,000 yearling fish at two hatcheries. It is stocked primarily in lakes, where it can become a trophy, growing much larger than it does in streams. Though the channel cat can reproduce in still water, in many lakes numbers are maintained solely by stocking. All are closely related to the larger channel cat, but are better adapted to sluggish creeks and oxygen-poor ponds and lakes.
Bullheads tolerate pollution and common fish toxicants better then other fish.
All it needs is wet grass. They're one step above rocks. Bullheads of all three species spawn in late spring and summer, nesting in shallow depressions in sand or mud bottoms. Soon after the eggs hatch, hundreds to thousands of black young swarm near the surface as the parents patrol the margins of the school against predators. Bullheads are omnivorous, feeding on invertebrates and vegetation and some small fish.