Do Large Catfish Reduce Area Bass Size

[rejn]

I'm a bass fisherman, so don't stop reading when I start by mentioning catfish. My question is about Largemouth Bass. I've heard some catfish anglers recommend releasing giant catfish when they are caught so the ecological balance of that part of the lake or river won't be disturbed. (The catfish and carp guy recommends this.)But, as I said, this recommendation came from catfish anglers who want to keep catching big catfish. It seems to me that the diet of catfish and bass, while not identical, are very similar. I'm thinking of a particular area that I think is prime habitat for both bass and catfish. I was fishing for bass, but hooked something much larger. It was no log or rock. While I was NOT cranking the reel, my pole bent over like a shark hit it. When I set the hook, I couldn't budge it. OK, I admit it, I broke my 12 pound line without moving the fish one inch. In my mind, perhaps this was an 80 or 100 pound catfish. I remember the location exactly, and will return when mama catfish are filled with eggs because, even though I'm after bass, I would be thrilled to catch a hundred pound catfish. Here's my question. If I indeed catch a huge catfish, should I keep it or release it since my real goal is to catch a huge largemouth bass? It seems that a hundred pound catfish must be eating an enormous amount of bass food that I would prefer the area bass would eat. Or would it make little difference to the nearby bass? Richard E

[Bluebasser86]

Just like a huge bass, huge catfish will often try to get the best bang for their buck meal item possible. In a lot of cases, that's going to be something much larger than even the biggest bass can handle. A 50lb flathead or blue can gulp down a 5-7 pound carp like it's nothing, and go looking for more. Catfish tend to eat a lot of rough fish as well (carp, drum, buffalo, other catfish), along with the shad, herring, and panfish.

 

I'm a bass fisherman first, but I love catching big cats too. I'll keep smaller ones if someone is with me and wants to clean them, but the big ones go back. I've never caught a 100 pounder, but I've caught some over 60, and they were all released.

[CountryboyinDC]

I'm no marine biologist, but I do wonder about how much of an effect those monsters have other species in the same body of water.  People were (and to a degree still are) worried about snakeheads around here and what that will do to the bass population.  Most of what I've read suggests that the primary damage to the Chesapeake tributaries from flathead and blue catfish will be the crabs, shad, and river herring.  I have no reason to reasonably expect that I could land one of these if I hooked into one, but if by some miracle I did, it would be making for one heck of a catfish fry.  By all accounts, the shad run isn't what it used to be, and I'd like to keep the 'poor man's tarpon' off the extinction list.

[WRB]

Catfish and bass have coexisted longer then man has been around without our help.

The gene pool for big bass or cats have already been distributed via spawning while those fish were smaller. 
The only reason to release big fish is to know they can grow larger and catching rare big fish is challenging.

When big fish are removed they are gone and never know there potential.

Catfish eat both live and dead prey keeping the ecosystem healthy. Never heard of a lake being over populated with big fish, small fish yes.

Tom

 

[YoTone]

Ive heard people mentioning that since they introduced the flathead catfish in the lower park of the schuylkill river in philly  the smallmouth fishing has almost vanished.  

[papajoe222]

On 1/16/2020 at 9:39 PM, YoTone said:

Ive heard people mentioning that since they introduced the flathead catfish in the lower park of the schuylkill river in philly  the smallmouth fishing has almost vanished.  

Two things come to mind when you mention this, First is humans messing with the ecosystem. Something similar happened to the Wisconsin River system when they introduced muskie back in the 70's. Crappie fishing was a big draw to CastleRock and Pentwell lakes prior to that. In less than a decade it all but disappeared.  The second is that a river system is constantly changing and it's very possible that caused the smallies to change locations to more favorable ones.

[JediAmoeba]

The biggest problem I see when talking about keeping large catfish to eat is the amount of PCB's it may have and the fact they don't taste very good...  The small/medium sized catfish however are great to keep.  

[Bluebasser86]

To add to this;

 

Kansas does yearly shocking/netting samples and post the numbers in a "Fishing Forecast". A lot of the best bass lakes also rate highly for numbers and size of catfish.

[greentrout]

 

used to fish an excellent bass hole about 7 acres ... it went down ... owner told me he made a very bad decision putting one of these in his lake ...  some parts of the south call 'em tabby cats better known as flatheads ... they are voracious eaters of other fish ...

 

good fishing ...

 

 

 

 

[bazzelite19]

If you're fishing a smaller lake flatheads can be problematic because they will actually eat the bass themselves. It depends on the size of the water. Most phenomenal bass lakes in the country have lots of large predatory cats but if theyre 175000 acres it wont matter because the sheer size. The only times they will have noticeable impacts is on places less then maybe 100 acres. Which is just a guess but seems correct. But no matter the size lake- the same lake will have more bass in it without flatheads then with. The other part of this is a flathead that size would easily take more then a decade to grow that size so killing it doesnt seem right. Thats what the smaller "eater" cats are for. Plus they have less pcbs, Mercury, lead, etc. In their tissue.