New or absorbing eggs in a catfish

We cleaned channel catfish this afternoon and the females that had eggs were eighter absorbing them back in to their systems or they spawned quite awhile ago and these are the new eggs they will hold until next spring. All the eggs were small and some bags were almost white. There wasen’t any blood veins on any of the eggs, A fish that size would have had 6″ to 8″ egg sacksjust a few weeks ago. Think there being absorbed back ino their systems or the new eggs for next year? The eggs sacks were about 2″ long in some of them that were around 8 to 10 pounds, and being as white as they were I think their the new eggs for next year. A few weeks ago their egg sack were full of blood and very ripe and they were ready to lay. The waters been up and down but to me they should have found a place to spawn, got any Ideas?

My guess is they’re new eggs… I’ve never heard of anything egg-laying reabsorbing formed eggs into their systems.

OTOH maybe they’re just the later-bloomers… the spawn may very well not happen in a single weekend.

From what I’ve heard females will absorb their eggs back into their systems if theres too much pressure or they can’t find a place to lay them. I don’t know how many or what species but Im pretty sure some do.

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From what I’ve heard females will absorb their eggs back into their systems if theres too much pressure or they can’t find a place to lay them. I don’t know how many or what species but Im pretty sure some do.

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I think I have heard that before too. Eggs require a lot of blood and nutrition and to just drop them would be a waste(to the fish) unless they turned around and ate them. I can’t say I have heard it for sure though.

It seems to me that I’ve heard something about fish being able to absorb their eggs while I was sitting in class sometime… So I did a little searching on the net, but I couldn’t really find anything scientific about it, their were just some crappie guys yacking about it. So if their talking about it, it must not be true?

Mike