Photo by Tom Evans

Catfish are, increasingly, not only a regular staple on the outdoorsman's table but a targeted game species. Summer months are the hottest in terms of temperature and catfish angling opportunities. While the entire state of Virginia boasts good cat angling, the eastern tidal waters of our Commonwealth is where the best angling can be found. Filling a cooler with catfish in a few hours is easily done with the right technique and approach.

We went to the district fisheries biologist Bob Greenlee for the Tidewater Region of Virginia for some answers about the catfish fishery in tidal waters of Virginia. Greenlee studies, samples and manages the tidal James, Chickahominy, Pamunkey, Mattaponi, Piankatank/Dragon Run and the lower Rappahannock rivers. Greenlee has spent hundreds of hours studying these rivers, as well as the catfish and fish communities on these waters. We found out that each river is different in terms of the fishery it supports and the reasons for the status of the fishery.

According to Greenlee, blue catfish have been introduced to all of Virginia's major tidal tributaries. Most recently, blue catfish were introduced (probably by anglers) to the Piankatank River.

Blue catfish are very aggressive fish that grow extremely fast given the right conditions and amount of forage. They now dominate the catfish fishery in the Rappahannock, Mattaponi, Pamunkey, Chickahominy and James rivers.

Greenlee noted that the Piankatank/Dragon Swamp is for the time being the only tidal river system in his area that holds large numbers of quality channel catfish and native white catfish.

THE JAMES RIVER
Any angler wanting to catch a trophy catfish in Virginia knows that they need only to travel to the James River. Anglers from all over the country have heard of the James River and its monster catfish. Catching a mammoth catfish on this system is not an unrealistic expectation by any means.

"Anglers can go to the James River and expect to catch 30- to 40-pound blue catfish on a regular basis, and if they hit the right hole on the right day, they will be catching unbelievable numbers of these large blue catfish. Blue catfish in the 50- to 60-pound range are caught on a fairly regular basis and blue catfish up to 83 pounds have been caught in the James," Greenlee observed.

Blue catfish have been in the James River system less than 30 years, having been introduced in the mid-1970s. Greenlee's records show that the species did not really take off until the mid- to late 1980s and early 1990s.

"The blue catfish population continues to expand to this day, both in numbers and in size distribution of fish in the population. It would not surprise me to see the size of blue catfish available for angler catches continue to expand upwards, with the potential of blue catfish approaching 100 pounds at some point in the not too distant future," he said.

Why do the catfish grow so fast and so large in the James River? Forage is the big answer. Greenlee noted that the James is very productive and the forage base of gizzard shad shows no sign of depletion up to this point. Once the blue catfish grow to a size where they can inhale a gizzard shad, they grow at an impressive rate. Data shows that a 10-year-old fish on the James averages 12 pounds, but two years later, the fish have more than doubled their weight to an average 27 pounds. The growth of the blue cats differs among individual fish as Greenlee pointed out.