NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office are funding research studies to find ways for states agencies to reduce population density of blue catfish in Chesapeake Bay tributaries and Atlantic Coastal tributaries. Here's some excerpts from NOAA website...


NOAA CHESAPEAKE BAY
Invasive Catfish

An invasive species is defined as an �alien species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm to human health� (Executive Order 13112).
Blue and flathead catfish are considered invasive species in the Chesapeake Bay; they have rapidly expanded into nearly every major tributary in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Scientists are researching how and why these catfish are spreading so rapidly.

Blue and flathead catfish comprise a highly valued recreational fishery in some areas, but are likely negatively affecting native species and the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem


Status

Biomass: Blue catfish have the potential to dominate the fish populations in tributaries where they are present, representing up to 75% of total fish biomass from recent boat electrofishing collections in the tidal James and Rappahannock Rivers
....


Science and Management

The Chesapeake Bay Sustainable Fisheries Goal Implementation Team (Fisheries GIT) is a group of representatives from federal agencies, state fisheries managers, and other fishery stakeholders. In January 2012, the Fisheries GIT Executive Committee adopted an Invasive Catfish Policy Adoption Statement, noting �the potential risk posed by blue catfish and flathead catfish on native species warrants action to examine potential measures to reduce densities and limit range expansion, and to evaluate possible negative ecological impacts.�

...

Life History and Habitat

Life history, including information on habitat, growth, feeding, and reproduction of a species, is important because it affects how a fishery is managed.


Geographic range: Blue catfish are native to the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio River basins. They were introduced into the James, Rappahannock, and York Rivers in Virginia during the 1970s and 1980s as a new recreational fishery. These catfish have quickly spread throughout the Bay into nearly every major tributary. Flathead catfish�also not native to the Chesapeake Bay�were introduced into the James River in the late 1960s. They have now been observed in the low-salinity upper sections of many Bay tributaries.


Life Span: Blue catfish have a relatively long lifespan; fish more than 20 years old have been observed in Missouri waters. A long lifespan combined with large maximum size, an expansive diet, and increasing population sizes have raised concern for the ecological effects of blue catfish on the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem.

Food: Blue and flathead catfish are apex predators of Bay watersheds; they consume at many different levels of the food chain. They are opportunistic and generalist predators. They have a varied diet that includes almost anything�crustaceans, worms, other fish, and even other catfish. As adults, both blue and flathead catfish feed primarily on other fish, including menhaden, shad, river herring, and blue crabs. As populations of these invasive catfish grow and become more widely distributed, their consumption of native fish species also increases.

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Maximum Size: Both blue and flathead catfish can grow to be larger than 100 pounds. One blue catfish, caught in an inland lake on the Virginia-North Carolina border, weighed 143 pounds. The Chesapeake Bay record is 102 pounds, caught in the James River in 2009.

Reproduction: Blue and flathead catfish are highly productive and create extremely high numbers of offspring in each reproductive cycle. They spawn once a year from late May into June, mostly in lower-salinity habitats in streams and smaller tributaries. Females produce 4,000 to 8,000 eggs per kilogram of body weight�so a 10-pound fish could produce more than 20,000 eggs.

This can't really be compares to most Texas lakes, as blue catfish were already present in some lakes when they were created by damming rivers, as we're flathead catfish. Lake lewisville hasn't ever even stocked blue catfish in it, and there are tons of fish in it.

They are considered invasive up north because by definition, they were aliens introduced to the ecosystem, compared to the naturally occurring catfish in southern US waters

Weather blue catfish are native to Texas or not is beside the point . There are a lot of misinformation going around nowadays, be it online or on guides boats to a point of outright hostility towards other fishermen who harvest fish larger than 10 lbs. The purpose this thread is to inject facts and scientific studies into the mix to separate facts from fictions.

I've included several paragraphs of excerpts that contains general information on blue catfish that are helpful in providing better understanding why high harvest of blue catfish in tawakoni contribute to fast growing of blue cats and the abundant population of large fish in that lake.

On the other hand, without high harvest of large and small fish, blue catfish will certainly reach the 75% of all biomass in tawakoni you will have what biologists call inter_specific competition for food amongst different species which will eventually lead to intra - specific competition within same species of blue catfish... a recipe for very slow growth rates.

Below article by Kim Graham research article published in 1999 American Fisheries SYMPOSIUM. Excerpts will further explain...

Blue catfish in the Rio
Grande River, Texas, grew at a faster rate than
fish in the 3-year-old Amistad Reservoir, Texas
(Henderson 1972), however, fish from different
sites within the reservoir grew at different rates.
Jenkins (1956) attributed decreasing growth rates
of blue catfish through 9 years in Lake Texoma,
Oklahoma, to inter-specific competition that oc-
curred as the fish community reached carrying
capacity. Intra-specific competition caused slow
growth of blue catfish in Kentucky Lake, Kentucky
(Conder and Hoffarth 1965), whereas growth im-
pairment of blue catfish in Kentucky Lake were
believed to be caused by both intra- and inter-spe-
cific competition (Freeze 1977). The fastest
growth rates for Kentucky Lake blue catfish are
believed to be in areas where intra-specific com-
petition was reduced by high harvest (Hale 1987).

It may lead to faster growth rates, but does it lead to an overall greater size? And also, what fish were being highly harvested in Kentucky lake? Big or small fish.

Like you stated, there is a lot of misinformation out on the web, and it all needs to be looked at. Personally, I am all for releasing fish over 10lbs, look at what it did for bass fishing? Lots more big fish in various lakes, why couldn't that work for blue cats?

The James river is a one over 32". One of the best blue cat destinations in the world . Brings in millions to the local economy in Virgina .

I think we got a bad deal...we get zebra mussels and they get blue and yellow catfish. They can do all the research they want...they are not going to eliminate these fish out of their river systems, nor will they get any support to do so. Lots of non-native species have been largely beneficial for economic and agricultural reasons. Some have been quite the opposite. If I am not mistaken, I believe that the blue catfish is not native to the Trinity river system, yet it is the dominant catfish species in any reservoir were it obtains large enough numbers.

I would also be careful of referencing old fishery research...if they were that accurate back then we would have a walleye section on the Texas Fishing Forum, because they stocked millions of those things in the late 70s and early 80s.

I think Lewisville was stocked with blue catfish. I think it occurred at the impounding of the old lake and/or the new lake. Look at google maps st the hatchery ponds just below the dam. There is a whole bunch under the water just below the old dam. The website shows tpwd stockings. I think all of the area lakes where stocked by the feds when they were impounding. Most of the tpwd records don't show stockings until several years after the lakes were impounded. Lewisville and grapevine literally filled up in weeks serving their main purpose of flood control right off the bat. That is the reason why there is a rock crusher in lake grapevine and telephone poles in the middle of lake Lewisville. So I don't think they were waiting for the lake to fill up. I think that is just they way they did it back then.

Lmao! $$ you could see and miss everything else. We could talk about $ too, first I doubt it if the slimy blue catfish could bring millions to Virginia economy. Sure like to see real numbers. Second, the Chesapeake Bay Comercial fisheries and its ecosystem are worth a lot more than what a few catfish anglers and guides can throw at them.

The the disastrous law of one 32 ln blue catfish is what prompted federal and state fish biologists to declare blue catfish as invasive species and are now scrambling to find ways to reduce blue catfish population density in the James River and other tributaries in the Chesapeake Bay.

I'm with you on walleye in Texas, but I think you would be impressed with the achievements of Missouri pioneer biologist, the late Kim Graham who spent 30 years researched big rivers fish including blue catfish. He was well respected and admired by fish biologists and researchers, he was known as the grandfather of Missouri paddlefish management.

His paper that I sited


American Fisheries Society Symposium 24:37�49, 1999
� Copyright by the American Fisheries Society 1999

A Reviews of the Biology and Management of Blue Catfish
KIM GRAHAM
Missouri Department of Conservation, Fish and Wildlife Research Center
1110 South College Avenue, Columbia, Missouri 65201-5299, USA

Is full of technical details on blue catfish from Graham own research and others papers that he reviewed. It's available in pdf file, just Google on the web. I highly recommend this paper to anyone who wants to learn more about blue catfish.


Also here's a link to paper on Missouri paddle fish that referred to Kim Graham
Grand Father of Missouri Paddle Fish Management

Good job you just keep picking some great places to catch record blue cats . Great job Kim Graham!

Head to big rivers like the Missouri River, or lake with large running tributaries. Texoma and the red river is your best bet in Texas. Tawakoni will never give u any world record, keep dreaming.

No one seems to worry about our local invasive species...the yellow bass. TRWD keeps on pumping them in from Cedar Creek. The white bass is almost gone out of Arlington.

Better eating than white bass ..........

NOAA is the same organization that says that Red Snapper are endangered in the Gulf. Same organization that destroyed the Texas Shrimp Industry. Same organization that once promoted Global Warming and now calls it climate change. I don't have a dog in this hunt. Really couldn't care less what laws you guys on Tawakoni adopt or don't. But be careful who you go to for information. NOAA is notorious for political based science rather than actual fact based science.