i have been fishing this pond for about 4 days now. Everyday i seem to be getting more cats about all the same size (6-8in). I’m getting a lot of fish though i caught 37 last night, but i was wondering how can i tell if there are bigger cats in there?

Well the first question I would ask is whether or not you are truly catching Catfish or are they Bullheads? If you are catching bullheads you are catching them at their normal size. While Bullheads do get bigger than six to eight inches on occasion they average about the length you are catching. If they are Channel Catfish and all of them are within this size range you are likely fishing a pond that holds only stunted Catfish that will likely not grow much larger. They key to answering your question is the size of the pond and the entire food chain. Small ponds with too many predators are not a good situation. In these cases the predatory fish tend to become stunted and will not grow beyond a nominal size. This can happen with Largemouth Bass, Northern Pike, Catfish and just about any other predator. In an effort to find out if your pond holds larger fish I would try increasing the size of the bait you are using. If you can, try to catch some Bluegills to use for bait. If you have a three to four inch Bluegill as bait you will quickly learn whether there are larger Catfish available in this pond. If it is truly large Catfish you are after you are better served looking for bigger bodies of water. It takes an established food chain of some size to be able to sustain sizeable amounts of large Catfish. Small ponds are known for large amounts of fish but not for trophies.