Catfish have excellent senses of sight and smell, their whiskers and skin are covered with sensitive taste buds, and while they have no external ears, specialized body structures allow them to hear quite well.
Catfish Basics #166—Understanding Catfish Senses with Keith “Catfish” Sutton
All catfish anglers should be aware of the amazing sensory abilities of their quarry. These senses help the fish find food, decide what to eat and avoid predators. Understanding how the senses function can dramatically improve your fishing success.
Taste
A catfish just six inches long has more than a quarter million taste buds scattered over its skin. On a giant blue cat or flathead, taste buds number in the millions. At least 5,000 cover each square centimeter of skin, with the densest concentrations on the gill rakers and whiskers (barbels). Taste buds cover the fins, back, belly, sides and tail. If you were a catfish, you could taste pizza just by sitting on it.
Smell
The sense of smell is equally keen. Catfish can smell some compounds at one part to 10 billion parts of water. Water flows over folds of sensitive tissue inside the catfish’s nostrils, allowing detection of certain substances in the fish’s environment. The number of these folds seems related to sharpness of smell. Channel cats have more than 140. Rainbow trout have 18, largemouth bass 8 to 13.
Hearing
With no visible ears, it might seem catfish can’t hear well, but that’s not true. A catfish’s body has the same density as water, so it doesn’t need external ears. Sound waves traveling through water go through a catfish as well. When sound waves hit the fish’s swim bladder, the bladder vibrates. This amplifies sound waves, which travel to small bones (otoliths) in the inner ear. The otoliths vibrate, too, and bend hair-like projections on cells beneath them. Nerves in these cells carry sound messages to the brain.
The swim bladder on most fish is independent of the inner ear. But in catfish, bones connect the bladder and inner ear. Fish without these bone connections (bass and trout, for example) can detect sounds from 20 to 1,000 cycles per second. Catfish hear sounds of much higher frequency, up to about 13,000 cycles per second.
Sight
Catfish also have excellent eyesight. In clear water, they often strike lures, with no sensory cues other than sight triggering this action. They see something resembling prey, and they attack.
Cones in the eyes indicate catfish have color vision, and other structures enhance their night-feeding abilities. Rods improve dim-light sight, and each eye is lined with a layer of crystals that reflects gathered light on the retina, thus improving the fish’s low-light vision even more.
Pros and Cons
When catfishing, you benefit from the fact that catfish senses are so acute. Because catfish have multifaceted detection systems, they have little trouble finding your bait day or night no matter what type of water—clear, muddy, stained, fast-moving, slow-moving, etc.—you are fishing.
However, the fact that catfish are so keenly aware of smells, sounds and other sensory cues also can make it difficult to hook a fish that detects something out of place.
For example, if a catfish tastes or smells certain compounds in the water or on your bait, feeding activities will cease. These compounds include such things as gasoline and ingredients in sunscreen, tobacco and insect repellent.
The fact that catfish have one of nature’s most acute auditory systems could create difficulties as well. Making unnecessary noise in your boat certainly will alert catfish to your presence and make them warier. But you also must contend with their superb lateral line sense, which is used to detect low-frequency vibrations. As surprising as it may seem, this sense enables a catfish to detect your footsteps on shore.
A catfish also uses its sight to detect shadows. If, for example, an osprey flies overhead and casts a shadow on the water, a catfish seeing this will retreat to the safety of cover or deep water. An angler’s shadow cast on the water often produces the same reaction.
To improve your catch rate, therefore, you should use avoidance strategies that tilt the odds more in your favor. Avoid contact with gas, sunscreen, insect repellent and tobacco when fishing. Avoid making unnecessary noise, even when bank fishing. Avoid fishing where your shadow falls upon the water, or fish at night when shadows aren’t a problem.
Following these simple tips, seldom considered by most anglers, can greatly increase the number of catfish you catch.
