If you know how to easily remove the Y-bones, Northern pike is hard to beat. Walleye is also very good. If you ate big catfish in a lot of states you would have more mercury in you than a thermometer.

LOL, I have a couple friends commercially harvesting and selling many thousand lbs per week.

BUT, as one told me, 30 years ago his Dad was getting $0.50/ lb for channel cats
Now he's lucky to get $0.50/lb.
And gas ain't $0.50/ gallon anymore.

Same guy said he can take 500# out of a hole, day after day after day, and hasn't put a dent in them

And it's an easy market to saturate, so they switch to where the money is.

I know both guys in your pic.

The whole Chesapeake system was once described as a great protein factory.
Just that it's producing bluecats these days.

20 years ago, I had to go to VA to catch bluecats.
Now I catch them everywhere, while fishing for other species.

We eat quite a few ourselves, but ain't put a dent in them.

Walleye, Perch, Rockbass and Sunfish are the best eating. imo

No seasoning required if you start with good fish, lol.

Sounds like a wonderful commercial fishing opportunity!

............ bless your heart . Airport Trapper remember that conversation we had about this

Again, read closely.
The first paragraph.
These guys ARE commercial fisherman, it's all they do.

When you saturate the market, and it's easy to do, what do you do with them?
Going to keep fishing when you can't move them and/ or are losing money???
Fish harder? Lose more money?
Or switch to oystering, muskrats, etc?


State has spent money TRYING to build demand/ promote them.

The best way to eat freshwater fish that aren't flatheads is to let flatheads eat them first, then eat the flatheads.

Well I was thinking about shipping them away from where it's saturated. Honestly there has to be something else somone could do with them. Fertilizer possibly 🤔 what about over seas marketing ?

stupidity flourishes in mary land.

Horseshoe crabs used to get harvested here and shipped all over for bait.

If there was an economic incentive, somebody would be doing it.

Overseas? Maybe when they're hungrier?

Heck, being in Miss, you should know that imports of overseas catfish killed American catfish aquaculture.


Southern catfish growers, TRYING to stop it, either on purpose or inadvertently, hamstrung commercial guys here, by getting the USDA involved.

See below


It may seem like a generation ago, but in 2008 through the Farm Bill Congress passed a requirement for catfish to be inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and that created a problematic and cumbersome issue for Chesapeake Bay processors.

Catfish are the only fish inspected by the USDA, as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) handles food safety for all other fish species. The regulation requires that in-person inspectors examine the catfish before they go to market. Processing catfish in a dedicated space at a time when USDA inspectors are available has been a significant impediment to getting a robust commercial catfish industry up and running in Maryland.

The inspection process was put in place by a group of southern Congressmen that were seeking to curtail the market for Vietnamese catfish to protect domestic farmed catfish sales from the Mississippi delta, according to The Wall Street Journal. Vietnam produces about 95 percent of the catfish imported to the U.S.

The result of this protectionist trade policy is an expensive government program that raises the cost of processing blue catfish from the Chesapeake Bay.

In ten separate reports, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) argues that the USDA inspections amounted to government waste, noting the USDA program costs $14 million per year as well as $20 million to start up, while the FDA previously handled catfish inspections for just $700,000 a year. The GAO's Steve D. Morris testified that the USDA's catfish inspection program was unlikely to enhance the safety of eating catfish and instead duplicates "other federal catfish inspections at a cost to taxpayers."

It's time for Congress to fix this mistake.

Easy to take out the Y bones on a pike.
I like pike around 3-4 lbs from cold water and from a lake where they feed mostly on the freshwater shrimps-their meat is pink like a trout and very firm.Excellent eating.some Native people prefer those to pickerel because they like to smoke the fish over an outdoor fire.

See my previous post, Southern catfish growers, choked out harvest here.

Federal law REQUIRES USDA to inspect catfish, only species so regulated.

Want to guess the hours, days they're available???

LOL...

If someone fries up some catfish, I'll eat it, but it's definitely not a fish I'd pay to eat.

Now crappie and sunfish are where it's at. Walleye and yellow perch are pretty great too.

They should change the name of the fish when it hits market so people don’t realize it’s Catfish. The name ruins it for most people and when they Google Catfish and see whiskers, NOPE!!

Just like the fur industry calls weasels ermine, and Marten Sable, etc.

LOL, we have a strong muskrat meat market, folks ain't squeamish.

Gross. You northern folks can have your tiny fish. I'd take a 15lb bluecat over any other fish I've ever ate. Crappie included.

Wolfie , can't speak for all of the north , but lots of fishing laws that prohibit efficient catch.

no trot lines , no nets , 3 hooks per person , have to have the line so you can get to it quickly.

in a lot of those eastern states you need a special license to operate a boat that will get you to the fish in less than a long slow ride.
launch restrictions that make overnight fishing difficult.

where I am at and really most of WI there is no excess of cats , we have channel , flat , and a very occasional blue.

it has a lot to do with the culture of an area , what they eat and you would need to change the culture to eat the new species.

I think this is the main reason many people around here don't fish for or keep catfish from the larger rivers, which are heavily polluted.

I used to fish the Great Miami River a lot, until I cooked up a couple of bass from it, turned on the news, while I ate and heard that there was a huge benzene spill in the river about a mile upstream of where I fished. I have not eaten anything out of the Great Miami since. That was back around 1990. It's sad. The fishing is great, but the main reason I fish is for fish to eat.

Keith