On 3/21/12 I caught a 38.15 pound catfish in my kayak out of Lake Georgetown which I kept to certify as the rod & reel lake record. I kept the catfish on ice until the following afternoon when I was able to get it to a certified scale after work that evening. The fish had lost a considerable amount of weight over a day and a half and was certified at 34.54#. I had the fish certified at the fish hatchery in San Marcos where they aged the fish for me.

I got an email today telling me that this fish was 10 years old.

I expected the fish to be a little older honestly.
The guys down there say they dont age many catfish so I'm just posting this as a fun fact for those like myself who are curious as to how old larger catfish are.

The fish was a male, the pic is the left pic in my sig.

Cool. I'd like to see the age of some more fish to see how long it takes them to get big and how long the average fish lives. Also congrats on the record.

+1

Congrats on the record. I donated a fish to TPWD 2 years ago during their blue cat study on Lewisville. They tested for heavy metals and contaminants along with an age/growth analysis. The fish weighed 31 lbs, 25 years old and had a clean bill of health.

oh wow thats a 15 year difference within a +- 5 pounds, im wondering if maybe certain catfish just get bigger because of genitics or diet or even habbitat?

yes

There are a large number of factors when determining the growth ability of any fish blue catfish included

The habitat and health of a fishery is a large factor in that the more abundance and healthier a food source is the more plentiful and healthy in turn the blue cats as well as other predators would be

The largest factor among many is the Genetics it is a fairly common consensus in most any reports i've read that big fish get big fast and have special genes that enable the fish to grow at an exponential rate instead of growing at a restricted rate so to speak

here are some articles that i have read in the past and some date back as early as the late 60's and early 70's of when the information was first being studied atleast this is the earliest i have found

http://libinfo.uark.edu/aas/issues/1970v24/v24a21.pdf

http://fisheries.org/docs/pub_sympsample.pdf

http://fishing-notebook.com/FishWiki/(S(ufmzcl55ikdz4afbag3fbrnp))/GetFile.aspx?File=%2FBlue%20catfish%202.pdf

another fun fact my step grnp used to do marine biology and they caught a big cat that was 65 lbs one year they kept it and examined it they checked the age it was about 15 years old, he said they usually cut one of the spikes off and magnify it cause as the catfish ages and the bone grows more and more rings of hardbone, appear and he said that they have periods of little to no growth in length and size and some periods where they just keep growing then another eriod where they stop growing for quite a while

Age and size for fish can be a funny thing sometimes. I was fortunate to grow up around a bunch of large stock tanks. My neighbor had a 3 acre pond stocked with bass. Redicously overstaocked actually. After six years the fish were all less than 1/2 lb. We transplanted about 300 to a pond on our place that had not been stocked at all and had no other tanks flowing into it. It did have a great forage base of minnows, crawfish and insects. After 1 year we began catching 3 lb bass. After 3 years we caught 5 lb bass. At five years our pastor caught one on a goldfish that went 9.5 lbs.
The pond we originally got ours from had never had one over 2 lbs caught out of it......and it was 1 mile away.
Forage has a lot do do with nature. You can take it away or add it overnight. Genetics are infinite traits that go back as far as you want to believe.