Outlook For Record-Class Catches

The dawn of a new century offers a chance for reflection and prognostication. Daydreaming of Native American river life 1,000 years ago brings to mind images of the cats that once swam in untamed rivers like the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Missouri, and a hundred other streams between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Between the days of Lewis and Clark and man’s alterations of wild rivers, reports of 150- to 200-pound cats were commonplace.

By the end of the 20th century, though, the scene was not so inspiring. The machine age turned many eastern rivers into waste dumps for industry and a burgeoning population. In the South and Midwest, pesticides killed bugs and tainted catfish without discrimination. Big catfish in 1900 were table fare to be captured and sold on the open market. The second half of the century brought the damming of nearly every major river in America, cutting off the lifeblood of cats that lived for the flows and floods that replenished the land. Resilient as they were, catfish populations were on a line toward decimation.

But the final decade of the century promised a brighter future, with cleaner urban effluents and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bans on toxic heavy metals and pesticides. Growing enthusiasm among anglers in 1990 coincided with the publication of catfish articles in mainstream outdoor magazines, the startup of cat-specific literature like the Catfish In-Sider Guide, and even an International Catfish Symposium that fused scientific understanding of the genus.

Men have been pursuing catfish in North America for two centuries, and records have been kept since the 1930s, but those records are now tumbling at a fantastic pace. Considering past pressures from commercial harvesters, subsistence fishermen casting nets and hooks of every description, and a renewed pressure from savvy sport anglers, it’s amazing that catfish records continue to fall.

Catfish anglers who were surveyed rank catching a big fish as a high priority, more even than bass anglers who also are infected by the trophy bug. With blue and flathead potentials well over 100 pounds, and at least one channel cat topping 50, it’s no wonder that catmen are motivated by weightier issues.

State records were set at a frenzied pace in the last decade. In Oklahoma, for example, the state record for blue catfish was broken three times in the 1990s, with the last two differing by a mere 4 ounces and caught less than two months apart in two separate reservoirs. Blue cat records were set in 18 states, flathead marks in 15, and 19 states registered new channel cat records in the 1990s. The Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame (715/634-4440), tracks line class, state, and world records for North American gamefish. Incredibly, of the 54 line-class records listed for the big-three cat species, 40 (74%) were caught in the 1990s.

The Hall even recognizes catfish catches on fly-rods and maintains categories for each species in both kept and catch-and-release categories. Ted Dzialo, director of the Hall, believes that big catfish are receiving more attention. “It seems as if we’ve seen a resurgence of interest in catfish lately,” Dzialo says. “It’s not just old-timers sitting in boats, waiting all day for a fish to bite. Young guys are going after them and are understanding the potential recognition for big fish. I never thought we’d see the day when we’d have catch-and-release fishing for catfish, but we now track released catfish records, just as we do for bass and other sportfish.”

Whether more attention or better habitat is responsible for the record phenomenon, one conclusion seems obvious: Given the accelerated pace of the 90s, records are sure to rise even farther in this century and probably the next decade. Many avid anglers are just now appreciating the value of large catfish for sport, and some fishery managers are poised to enact conservation measures to improve the potential for monster cats. Habitat continues to improve as power and water-supply companies are mandated to release clean water below dams, and farm and factory wastes are targeted by the EPA for cleanup.

Who knows what potential records swim in American waters, or what 21st-century catfish conservation might do to the record books? Would it be ludicrous, or just optimistic to mention the number 200? Another writer in the year 2100 may look back to this point on the calendar as the bronze age for catfish, marking a departure from the dark ages of wanton catch and kill to an age of enlightenment for catfish managers and anglers.