Remember to Eat Your Catfish!

At least the Blues and Flatheads: DNR to anglers: Eat the catfish, don't throw it back

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources said it aims to reduce the number of invasive blue and flathead catfish in the state's waterways, partly by encouraging people to eat them.

In a demonstration at Smallwood State Park on Thursday, the DNR cooked blue catfish. The DNR is hoping to get the word out that blue catfish and flathead catfish are causing problems for native species and fish that swim up the Chesapeake Bay to spawn.

Blue and flathead catfish are native to the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio river basins. They were introduced into several rivers in Virginia starting in the 1960s and are now found in some major tribal tributaries in Maryland.

A little Blue Kitty, courtesy of Indian Head Charters

Experts said the fish can grow bigger than 100 pounds. The adults have few natural predators and consume native species of fish and shellfish.

"These are predators and they get very large, push 100 pounds, so they can eat just about anything, and they can compete very successfully, potentially out compete some of the native species that are here," said Don Cosden, manager of the DNR's Inland Fisheries Division.

The hope is that anglers will get a taste for these fish and with more people eating them, the population will decrease.

"In the Chesapeake, we have fish like shad and herring that migrate up our rivers and eventually go upstream to spawn, so one of the concerns is that these catfish are essentially standing in the way of these migrations and consuming those species that we really care about," said Peyton Robertson, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Director National Marine Fisheries Service.

You know who else like to eat shad and herring?  Almost every predatory fish, but in particular big striped bass, whose spawning run up the Chesapeake Bay conveniently corresponds to the spawning runs of  of shad and herring.

Hellas Restaurant Chef Michael Stavlas said the catfish are good eating.
"We go through a good bit of it, it's a good fish to use, it holds up well in cooking and you can use it in a lot of different cooking applications and it's a really tasty fish as well," Stavlas said. "I like it a lot."

DNR officials said they hope anglers will catch the catfish, but instead of throwing them back, eat them.

My Blue Cat fishing guru, Capt. Mike Starrett of Indian Head Charters, who has made a business of taking clients to catch them has adopted a tactic of recommending keeping the small ones for eating, while returning the big ones for more sport later, thus reducing the potential damage they do, while preserving the trophy fishery.  Since bigger fish have higher concentrations of many pollutants it is also a benefit from a health perspective.