Group spotlights recreational catfish potential

Catfish are getting an overdue boost from the American Catfish Association, which played a major role in the Catmasters tournament last weekend in Helena-West Helena.

Glen Oberacker, president of the American Catfish Association, said that catfishing has a lot of growth potential as a tournament sport, and also as a spectator event.

One major advantage is that anglers can catch a lot of giant catfish in the summer. Summer bass fishing, in contrast, features light catches of small fish. Two prime examples were the 2005 Bassmaster Classic on the Ohio River in Pittsburgh and the 2005 FLW Championship in Hot Springs on Lake Hamilton.

Kevin VanDam won the 2005 Classic, held July 29-31, with 11 bass that weighed a total of 12 pounds, 15 ounces. That was, coincidentally, the last Classic to be held in summer. In 2006, it became a winter tournament.

Two weeks earlier, George Cochran of Hot Springs won the FLW Championship with 15 bass in three days that weighed 16 pounds.

Compare that to the Catmasters tournament at Helena-West Helena. Despite sweltering, mid-90s temperatures, anglers brought almost 9,100 pounds of catfish to the scales. George Young and Tim Spencer won the tournament with 233.44 pounds. The fish were huge, and a few were almost more than anglers could handle as they wrangled them out of their livewells.

Anglers showed a lot of respect to their fish, too. They pumped large amounts of oxygen into the livewells, and the fish were promptly returned to their livewells and soon thereafter released.

According to some surveys, Oberacker said, catfish are the second most popular freshwater fish. They inhabit every river, stream and lake, making them one of the most accessible fish for anglers in boats and on the bank.

Obviously, catfish have tremendous trophy potential, with blue catfish sometimes exceeding 100 pounds. Regrettably, many states do not value their catfish and manage them dismissively.

Regulations, Oberacker added, are often inconsistent with public health guidelines. For example, many states have advisories discouraging the consumption of more than one catfish meal per month because toxins, especially mercury, accumulate to dangerous levels in catfish, and also bass. Such advisories exist in Arkansas for flathead and blue catfish on large sections of the Ouachita and Saline rivers, among others.

Even so, some states with consumption advisories do not have daily catfish bag limits.

“Unless somebody’s trying to catch a big mess of catfish for a church fish fry or something like that, there is no reason to keep a lot of catfish,” Oberacker said.

In Arkansas, the daily statewide limit of channel, blue and flathead catfish is 10 in any combination.

American Catfishing Association members “soft sell” catfish conservation through its tournaments, but also by word of mouth. Its tournaments are showcases in this regard, allowing spectators to see the live potential of fisheries like the Mississippi River.

Bill Dance, a bass fishing pioneer and media mogul, is an avid catfisherman who competed in the Catmasters event. He’s also a driving force in the American Catfish Association. He said the Helena-West Helena portion of the Mississippi River is the most productive catfishery in North America.

Surprisingly, the American Catfish Association’s members represent competing interests, including trotliners, jug fishermen and even noodlers, the people who wrestle spawning catfish off their beds by hand. They all advocate for their own interests, of course, but they all want abundant quality catfish. They put aside their differences to present a united front to achieve that goal.

Helena-West Helena’s leadership wants to make the community a world catfishing destination. It could be a smart bet, too, because catfish is the biggest thing you can consistently catch in freshwater. Anglers used to come from around the world to catch giant alligator gar in Arkansas, and there are giant sturgeon in some rivers of the Pacific Northwest. Unregulated harvest eliminated America’s trophy alligator gar fishery. Sturgeon succumbed to dams, channelization and pollution.

Catfish are plentiful and ubiquitous. They can be managed to satisfy diverse interests.