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
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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.�

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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.

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

Why are you bringing economics and money appeal into this? That has no place within this situation.


Answer this for me, hypothetically,a lake has a given biomass of 60,000lbs of fish. The only fish population within that lake is blue catfish. If there are 30,000 lbs of "trophy" class fish, but they are harvested at the same rate as the smaller fish, and also grow at the exact same rate as the smaller fish, what class of fish will eventually overpopulate the lake? Please remember, it takes longer for a fish to grow to a trophy size than for a fish to remain asilent a smaller fish.

Please refrain from the spiteful manner of having me come back and do some 3rd grade math with you, which I am perfectly capable of.

Want to know the different in biology? Post a question in bass section why tpwd didn't stock blue catfish in lake fork? I think you will get an earful, and if you persist,you'll get answer. If not, come back to this thread, we will do some third grade math here together and see if you still think releasing every blue catfish 10+lb is a good idea. [/size][/b]

I'm not going to waste my time on your hypothesis that is so far off base from reality. There is no such thing as trophy class fish, there are only different year ages group of fish or class in the water. You avoid my question HOW MANY EGGS DO FOUR 50 LB FEMALES BLUE CATFISH SPAWN EVERY YEAR ? From there, behind the 26 yea old cats class there are the 25 y.o. class, 24 y.o., etc., and so on all the way down to the eggs that were spawned hatched 26 years ago in TPWD HATCHERY....


Spiteful manner? Excuse me again, but who said anything about your capabilities? I didn't. I happen to have a third grader, his math homework consist of simple arithmetic addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and simple fractions. Those are precisely the kind of math that I intend to use to counter the arguments that people need to throw back fish 10lbs or larger. The point is IT ISN'T DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND THE "MATH".

This right here seemed pretty demeaning to me, which is why I asked you not to be spiteful.



I'm sorry, I may have glanced over the spawning female question, 4 female bluecats that weigh 50lbs each could lay between 2 and 4 million eggs, assuming they all lay 500,000-1million eggs, it could be more, I honestly don't know the exact number, but it is quite high. But, if one of those fish are harvested, the surviving hatchlings will take over her "biomass" within the lake in the next few years, thus creating one less big fish to catch within that lake. Your "3rd grade" math won't work for something as complex as what is happening to the big fish that get harvested, because you have to calculate what biomass they contribute to the overall biomass within the lake, and then which fish will grow based on that biomass that is taken away from the total.


Economics have nothing to do with whether or not to throw back fish over 10lbs. Money does not contribute to how big a fish gets, or how quickly.

That's nice to know. I'll remember this the next time I fish Chesapeake Bay

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.

Remember last year when the global warming research ship got stuck in ice?

TPWD Lake Fork Stocking History

http://tpwd.texas.gov/fishboat/fish/action/stock_bywater.php?WB_code=0433

Thank you wfhunte. I see that tpwd did stock blue catfish in lake fork. Something suspiciously being done to those blue catfish catfish population for fork not to have large blue catfish nearly 30 years later.

Anyway, from lake fork bass stocking history we can see that large mouth bass could not reproduce offspring enough in quantity so tpwd stocked 10 million large mouth bass fingerling from 1995 to 2014, every year about half a million fingerling per year.

Now let's look at blue catfish stocking history in lake Tawakoni. Blue catfish were stocked only once, 366,000 fingerling in 1989, and that was enough to produce an abundant population of blue catfish in tawakoni today 26 years later.

From above evidence we can see that blue catfish can reproduce much larger quantity of offspring than lm bass. Furthermore, if we consider the fact that there are no slot in tawakoni an bag limits of 25 blue catfish vs 5 bass in Fork, we conclude that blue catfish can reproduce extremely high quantity of offspring, THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE IN REPRODUCTIVE RATES BETWEEN THE TWO SPECIES.