KEN PERROTTE: Some see red, others gold with the blue catfish - Fredericksburg.com
For many years, kids and dads alike reveled in watching red and white bobbers dipping under the surface during trips taken as part of the "Take Dad Fishing for Father's Day" contest we used to stage annually.
At least 90 percent of those fish were blue catfish, with occasional channel catfish and white perch mixed in. Across much of the world, catfish are a bit of an "everyman's fish," known for fighting hard and tasting great, especially the smaller cats like the ones we targeted.
Catfish, master adaptors, often thrive in most waters where they've been placed. They develop ardent fans, including people who like to catch small fish to eat and others who seek powerful leviathans weighing upwards of 100 pounds.
Their proliferation, though, has generated concern.
Blue catfish are natives of the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio river systems. About 50 years ago, someone in the (then) Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries thought it was a good idea to stock them into the James, Rappahannock and York rivers to create a new recreational fishery.
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Unsurprisingly, it worked. By the late 1990s, state records for jumbo catfish were falling almost weekly, often traded between the James and the Rappahannock.
Blue catfish flourished and began dominating the main tidal rivers, outcompeting much of the competition. Biomass surveys later revealed a robust (unhealthy, some believe) number of blue catfish. In response, Virginia established commercial fishing programs, managed by the Marine Resources Commission, incentivizing removal of fish and creating markets for their flesh.
Today, several certified U.S. Department of Agriculture blue catfish processing plants operate in Virginia. One, Sea Farms, Inc., of Hayes in the Middle Peninsula, recently received a $250,000 state grant to improve its freezing and storage capacity.
Legislation (HB1135) breezing through the current Virginia General Assembly directs the commonwealth's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to further assess strategies to reduce the blue cat's negative ecological effects and increase sales and marketing opportunities.
Maryland, including the Potomac River, also has blue catfish. Maryland's Department of Natural Resources recently issued its own call for grant applications for invasive fish control, especially blue catfish and snakeheads. The grants, up to $5,000 each, also help fund "sustained beneficial uses of caught fish."
Maryland has declared war against cats and snakeheads, making clear these are fish non grata, deeming them "significant threats to ecologically and economically important native species." Catch and kill is Maryland's preferred angling method and transporting live fish between bodies of water is a crime.
Virginia is more nuanced; after all, fisheries professionals decided to stock the blues. Snakeheads are another story.
Blue catfish are the second-most popular species for recreational anglers in Virginia, says Margaret Whitmore, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources' tidal rivers fisheries biologist. The agency is analyzing long-term blue catfish data to assess factors like environmental changes and harvest.
Blue cats are largely nondiscriminatory diners in tidal waters, predators of shad, herring, striped bass, menhaden, crabs and likely whatever else they can catch. Some past detractors, often bass or crappie anglers, blamed the cats for decreased numbers of their species.
Studies have revealed, however, that blue cats aren't voracious predators of bass. Whitmore shared results from a comprehensive study that assessed blue catfish diet in Virginia's tidal rivers from 2013-16. Largemouth bass were found in the stomachs of fewer than 0.1% of blue cats in the James River, 0.13% in the Rappahannock and none in the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers.
"Both the James and Chickahominy rivers have strong largemouth bass populations and, although they've fluctuated over time, they're resilient and thriving despite blue catfish," Whitmore said. That said, she acknowledged the fish's opportunistic nature. That same diet study showed they eat migrating shad and river herring and commercially important blue crab when available.
Whitmore says Virginia's tidal rivers enjoy a strong recreational catfish fishery, even if trophy sizes have declined due to increased competition for food as whiskerfish populations grew.
Recreational anglers and commercial blue catfish fisheries that remove small and medium-sized blue catfish, which comprise 95% of the population, help reduce food competition and give some fish a chance to reach larger sizes, she explains.
"It sounds counterintuitive," she says, "but encouraging folks to remove blue catfish actually helps us maintain the trophy fishery while reducing the negative impacts (on native species).
While blues easily make up most of the catfish in Virginia's tidal rivers, flathead catfish numbers are increasing, especially in the Appomattox River tributary to the James. Some anglers like targeting them right at the James River fall line or just above. Flatheads are "definitely a concern," Whitmore says, "They start eating fish as soon as they can, and they have larger mouths, which allow them to eat larger prey."
Virginia DWR is monitoring for signs of flathead expansion and increasing abundance.
Fight, catch, eat
"Some folks love blue catfish while others are sick of them," Whitmore says. "Throw live bait in a tidal river and you'll likely come up with a blue catfish, regardless of your target species. That makes them a great fish for new anglers because they're going to have success and a full cooler of good eating fish to boot, but it can be frustrating for others who have fished these rivers for a long time or target other species. We're sensitive to that."
My recent trips to favored Rappahannock catfish holes yielded considerably fewer fish over the last couple of years. Efforts to commercially catch them and sell fillets at $9.99 a pound in supermarkets seem to be working. It would be nice if the current commercial fishing approach balances between catfish sustainability and eradication.
Truth be known, many of us, me included, still get a thrill whenever cats yank down the bobber.
— For more wide-ranging outdoors articles, videos and photos, see Ken Perrotte's weblog at outdoorsrambler.com.
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