Channel cats are the most numerous, most popular and most widespread species of catfish in the United States.
More than 12 million Americans fish for these hard-fighting, good-eating sportfish every year. (Photo by Sam Stukel, USFWS)
Catfish Basics #169—Getting to Know Channel Catfish
by Keith Sutton
The channel cat is the pin-up of the catfish world—sleek, muscular and one of the best of all reasons to be a kid with school just out and a good fishing hole nearby.
If you like catfishing, chances are good you love the channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus). This freckle-flanked, mid-sized cat is targeted by more anglers than any other species, thanks largely to its abundance and extensive range. Most anglers who pursue the species do so because channel cats are incredibly delicious, and they want some fish to take home and eat. But everyone who targets this whiskered warrior also enjoys its truculent nature, savoring to the utmost the water-churning skirmishes that always ensue when a channel cat is on the line.
Description
Channel cats aren’t colorful fish. The back and sides are silvery-gray to coppery-brown, speckled with a few to many small black spots. The belly is white. The tail has a deep fork. Breeding males take on a deep blue-black hue, and their head becomes greatly enlarged, with thickened jowls and lips.
Blue cats are very similar in appearance but rarely exhibit the black speckling seen on all but the oldest channel cats. The best way to distinguish the two species is to examine the anal fin. On channel cats, this fin has 24 to 29 rays and a rounded outer edge. Blue cats have a straight-edged anal fin with 30 or more rays.
Size
In July 1964, an angler fishing in South Carolina’s Lake Moultrie caught a 47-inch-long channel cat that weighed 58 pounds. That world record still stands, and many experts believe it will never be broken. Only four states—South Carolina, Arkansas, Mississippi, and California—have produced channel cats exceeding 50 pounds, and no place are channel cats that size regularly caught.
In waters with healthy channel cat populations, 1- to 5-pounders tend to be abundant, and 6- to 10-pounders only slightly less common. To catch a channel cat that exceeds 15 pounds, however, is quite extraordinary except in a few very productive waters. In the Red River below Lockport Dam near Selkirk, Manitoba, for example, 20- to 25-pound channel cats comprise a large percentage of the catch. Elsewhere, you can consider yourself quite lucky if you land a 20-pounder. Thirty-pounders are as rare as 12-pound largemouths.
Food Habits
Until they reach about 12 inches long, channel cats feed extensively on large aquatic insects, but also small fish and a variety of invertebrates such as terrestrial insects, crayfish and mussels. Fish such as minnows, chubs and other catfish comprise a larger part of the diet when channel cats exceed a foot in length, but as they grow, the catfish continue chowing down on invertebrates and other available foods. The bigger a channel cat becomes, however, the more fish it is apt to eat. By the time it reaches several pounds in weight, a channel cat subsists almost entirely on other fish.
Range
The original range of channel catfish stretched between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains from the Hudson Bay drainage to the Gulf of Mexico, and north and east of the Appalachian Mountains. Transplants to new waters have expanded the species’ range to include every state but Alaska, plus six of the 10 Canadian provinces and many lakes and rivers in Mexico as well. Channel cats are considered important sport species in at least 32 U.S. states.
Habitat
Channel cats are amazingly adaptable, inhabiting nearly any body of water that’s not too cold, too polluted or too salty. Anglers catch them in everything from clear creeks, fertile farm ponds and turbid sloughs to huge man-made reservoirs, natural lakes and slow-moving, bottomland rivers. Channel catfish thrive best in clean, warm, well-oxygenated water with slow to moderate current and abundant cover such as logs, boulders, cavities and debris.
Basic Fishing
A small spinning or spincast outfit spooled with 6- to 15-pound-test monofilament line is ideal for catching channel cats you’d like to keep and eat. Upgrade to heavier tackle only if you’re targeting trophy fish specifically. The other tackle you’ll need can be carried in a small tackle box: a few hooks, sinkers and bobbers, some extra line, a stringer, and some pliers for removing hooks from the catfish’s tough mouth.
Any catfishing rig can be used, but the simplest usually work best. One such rig, the slip-sinker rig, is easily made by placing a small egg sinker on your main line above a barrel swivel tied at the line’s end. Add an eighteen-inch leader to the swivel’s other eye, and tie a hook (1/0 to 3/0 bait-holder, octopus or Kahle) to the end of that.
Another easy rig that works well is just a bobber above a medium-size hook, with a split shot pinched on the line between the two to sink the bait.
The list of good baits you can use is extensive. Some of the best include fresh chicken liver, night crawlers, minnows, crayfish, stinkbaits (commercial and homemade), catalpa worms, shrimp, hot dogs and frogs.
Despite what many anglers think, fishing for channel cats is not just a summer sport. You can fish year-round and expect to do well, even during the coldest part of winter. Night fishing often produces more cats because cats tend to be in the shallows more at night, and shallow shoreline waters are where most anglers fish. Channel cats feed actively during all hours, however, and are easily caught even during daylight hours if you fish prime hotspots such as outside river bends, dam tailwaters, river wing dikes, and holes, tributary mouths, bottom channels, riprap, log piles, stump fields and deep holes in ponds.
