I will start off by saying congrats Chaseasl on the great day of fishing! The smiles in the pictures attest to day that will be remembered for a longtime for everyone involved. Keeping some fish as well as the occasional trophy is fine, but focusing on catching trophy fish and keeping them all can impact the size structure of a fishery. It is true for bluegill, largemouth bass, and blue catfish as well as most other species of fish.
In Graham’s (1999) Review of the Biology and Management of Blue Catfish, he discusses a range of issues associated with blue cats. Here is his historical perspective on fish size.
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Records of large catfish date back to the Lewis and Clark exploration of the Missouri River. They described large “white” catfish, undoubtedly blue catfish, reaching nearly 1.5 m in length. Heckman (1950), in his Steamboating Sixty-Five Years on Missouri’s Rivers, provides the following account: “Of interest to fishermen is the fact that the largest known fish ever caught in the Missouri River was taken just below Portland, Missouri. This fish, caught in 1866, was a blue channel cat and weighed 315 lb. It provided the biggest sensation of those days all through Chamois and Morrison Bottoms. Another ‘fish sensation’ was brought in about 1868 when two men, Sholten and New, brought into Hermann, Missouri, a blue channel cat that tipped the scales at 242 lb.” Heckman provides other evidence that it was common to catch catfish weighing 125–200 lb from the Missouri River during the mid 1800s. Even Mark Twain, talked about seeing “a Mississippi catfish that was more than six feet long” (Coues 1965). In November 1879, the U.S. National Museum received a blue catfish weighing 150 lb from the Mississippi River near St. Louis. The fish was sent by Dr. J. G. W. Steedman, chairman of the Missouri Fish Commission, who purchased it in the St. Louis fish market. The following quote from a letter from Dr. Steedman to Professor Spencer F. Baird, U.S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, suggests that catfish of this size were not uncommon. “Your letter requesting shipment to you of a large Mississippi catfish was received this morning. Upon visiting our market this afternoon, I luckily found two—one of 144 lbs, the other 150 lbs. The latter I shipped to you by express.”
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He suggests that two of the main reasons for the decline of blue cats were poor water quality and the building of dams on the big rivers. Water quality has been improving since the early 1970s associated with the passage of the Clean Water Act. Now more and bigger catfish being caught each year and this indicates an on-going recovery of this species. I would expect size records to continue to be broken as we have had much better water quality for much of the last 20 years. The large bluecats are somewhere between 10 and 20+ years old. It does take a while to grow them to trophy size.
It is not surprising that the large blue cats that Chaseasl caught were located below a dam. Blue cats are known to move greater distances than channel or flathead catfish and prefer big river habitats that have deep sift water. In the spring, dams on the big rivers block upstream movement and concentrate fish immediately downstream of the dam.
There are a number of fisheries around the country where the big fish now exceed 80 lbs and one can realistically hope to catch a fish over 100 lbs. Release of the 30 to 60 lb fish will help our Tennessee fisheries produce even larger fish more consistently. In the modern fishing world with the advanced sonar, GPS maps, super strong fishing lines, internet catch reports, and highly educated fisherman, recreational fishing can have a major impact on fish populations in a short period of time. It is all of our responsibility to balance harvest and release with respect to our own ability to catch fish.
If these catfish represent the “trip-of-a-lifetime” then congrats on the awesome catch! If you all are doing this every weekend, then please let the biggest ones go to give someone else a chance catch these rare trophy fish.
Hopefully in another 10 year, we will be arguing about someone keeping too many 100 to 125 lb blue cats and telling them to keep the small 30 lb fish
It is possible with blue cats.
Jim