Advancing the Sport: DNR to Stock Larger Catfish in Small Waters

By John McCoy

johnmccoy@wvgazette.com

APPLE GROVE – When one of West Virginia’s fish hatcheries unexpectedly produced more channel catfish than it was supposed to, biologists saw an opportunity to improve channel cat survival in the state’s lakes and ponds.

"Instead of stocking those surplus fish when they were small, we kept them in the hatchery for another winter and allowed them to get bigger," said Zack Brown, district fisheries biologist for the state Division of Natural Resources. "Instead of stocking them at 3 to 4 inches in size, we stocked them at 8 to 10 inches in length."

Stocked last year, those fish survived so well that DNR officials have decided to expand and continue the practice. "Eventually, all impoundments 100 acres or less in size will receive stockings of ‘advanced’ channel cats," Brown said.

The reason? Simple. They survive better.

"Studies have shown that once channel cats reach 8 inches or more in size, they’re much more able to evade being eaten by largemouth bass," Brown said. "We found that bass – and even some bluegills – take a pretty heavy toll on small stocked catfish."

Armed with that knowledge, DNR officials began looking for an opportunity to grow channel cats a little larger before stocking them. Their chance came in 2005, when good growing conditions at the agency’s Apple Grove hatchery produced about 25,000 more young channel cats than were needed for that year’s stockings.

"We decided to over-winter them [in the hatchery] and see how they would do if they were stocked at a larger size," Brown said.

Hatchery workers put those 25,000 fish into 24 small impoundments. A few weeks ago, Brown conducted a survey at one of the lakes to see how the larger fish fared.

"The results were pretty eye-opening," Brown said. "In [Jackson County's] O’Brien Lake, we stocked 7,500 regular-sized juvenile channel cats and 2,700 of the larger fish. We fin-clipped the larger fish so we could tell the difference between the two.

"When I surveyed the lake, I found that the fin-clipped fish made up 70 percent of the fish in that size class. They survived that much better than the smaller fish."

Though Brown acknowledged that some "kinks need to be worked out," he said the high survival rate bodes well for catfish anglers throughout the state.

"We plan to stock 25 to 30 additional lakes and ponds this year. We’ll probably have about 25,000 fish, and those will be spread among those waters. Our current plans are to try to stock advanced- sized fish every other year to keep from overstocking them in any single place."

If the program can be expanded to all of the state’s small impoundments, Brown believes fishermen will see the difference pretty quickly.

"This should really pump up catfish abundance," he said.

The only potential pitfall, he added, would occur if the hatchery failed to produce enough young channel cats.

"Fish hatchery work is a lot like farming," he said. "Some years you have a bumper crop, other years you have a crop failure. So far, we’ve had the fish and they’re doing OK."

To contact staff writer John McCoy, use e-mail or call 348-1231.

(c) 2007 Sunday Gazette – Mail; Charleston, W.V.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.