"Growth is highly variable among individuals after about age 5," he said. "In fact, one of the heaviest individuals we aged weighed 51 pounds and was just age 11!"

Bryan Hall of Caroline County is an avid catfisherman who prowls the James looking for big fish. Hall offers four spots to tap into this great fishery. Two of the spots are accessed from Osbourne Landing and take anglers downriver to the Dutch Gap area. Hall suggests that once they are at Dutch Gap, anglers watch the fish finder and find a dropoff that has bait suspended on it near some structure.

The second destination Hall likes to fish is even farther downriver at Jones' Neck Cutoff near the Shipping Cut.

Another spot Hall frequents has him putting in at the Jordan Point Yacht Club Marina where he goes upriver to the green buoy 111.

"At the 111 'can' there is a lot of great structure and deep water. Fish in the 30-pound range are very common here," he said.

Downriver from the marina, Hall can often be seen fishing at the powerlines. He likes to find an isolated hole with his depthfinder and fish it with a 5-ounce egg sinker above his baited hook. Again, Hall looks for bait before putting out lines.

"Even if you do not see a big fish on the finder, you can often outwait them if the bait is there," he advised.

Although trophy blue cats can be caught throughout the year, anglers tend to agree that the best time to catch trophy blue cats is from late fall through midspring, with the catch dropping off somewhat during the spawn.

RAPPAHANNOCK RIVER
The Rappahannock was stocked with blue catfish at about the same time as the James, but does not boast mammoth fish in the same weight brackets and numbers as the James River. The Rappahannock River, however, was once known for its giant catfish. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the fishery was booming. The productivity has dropped off sharply with the decline in numbers of mud shad (gizzard shad). The primary source of forage in the Rappahannock River is white perch at this time.

According to Greenlee, the Rappahannock has the slowest growing blue catfish in any of the four major river systems studied (the James, the Rappahannock, Pamunkey and Mattaponi rivers). It is interesting to note that the Rappahannock River also have the slowest growing largemouth and smallmouth bass populations on any Virginia river systems.

All is not lost for anglers who want to fish the Rapp, however. The sheer numbers of eating-sized blue catfish is tremendous on this river. Anglers wanting to catch fish in the 15- to 25-inch range can do so all day long most months of the year.

The best fishing for blue catfish occurs from the Hicks Landing down to Leedstown. In this stretch of the river, there are numerous marshes, mud flats and tidal creeks that feed the river. The deep river bends and cut edges of the channel are the best spots for the larger blue catfish. Blue catfish up to 20 pounds are not uncommon, and the occasional fish weighing more than 50 pounds can be caught as well.

Anglers wanting to catch lots of fish can find them near the channel on the flats during both day and night. The creek mouths are excellent locations to fish for pan-sized fish. The creeks themselves are also dynamite areas and are best fished with a floating rig (described later) along the weed edges. Both pads and cattails provide cover for forage at high tide.