Blue catfish is now James River's biggest predator

By KIMBALL PAYNE, Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. 

Tim Wilson thought the James River was too orange and murky for fishing when he cut up chunks of shad for bait and dropped a few lines in the water south of Richmond.

After trolling a couple of hours, Wilson finally got a solid hit. The James' muddy complexion hid the bounty on the end of the hook until a 102-pound, 4-ounce blue catfish bumped against the side of the boat.

Wilson and his cousin could barely lift the fish from the water and they didn't have a scale to weigh the behemoth, the largest freshwater fish ever caught in Virginia and the first one tipping the scales more than 100 pounds.

"It looked like the fish had swallowed a basketball," Wilson said. "She was so big and ugly, she was pretty."

But Wilson's record-setting catch landed him smack in the middle of a growing brouhaha over the growth and appetite of the blue catfish, a non-native species introduced into the James River in the mid-1970s to beef up the river's sporting resume.

In a little more than 30 years, the blue catfish has morphed from scavenging newcomer to top predator in the James.

An adaptive and aggressive species, blue catfish cross traditional boundaries by hunting in brackish marshes and turning up as far south as the salty waters near the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel.

It's not just a select few monster fish, either. The blue catfish is so prolific and widespread that some estimates suggest that the species makes up as much as two-thirds of the fish population of the James by weight.

"We have an invasive species that is taking over the ecosystem," said Rob Latour, a marine biologist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary. "It's a predator on par with a shark."

The blue catfish takes years to turn the corner from bottom-dwelling vacuum cleaner to top predator. The average 8-year-old blue catfish weighs only about 4 pounds, but that is when blue cats switch to feasting on other fish.

By the time a blue catfish is 10 years old, it is gaining about 10 pounds a year.

In the 1990s, state scientists would catch samples of blue catfish, pulling in about 1,500 fish an hour. Similar samples now bring in as many as 6,000 fish, said Bob Greenlee, a biologist with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

"It wasn't until 1995 that the first 50-pound blue catfish was reported," Greenlee said. "We don't know what the population level of the blue catfish is going to be. It's an unknown. It's a concern."

Word of Wilson's record catch traveled quickly through the angling community, where the James has gathered buzz in recent years thanks to the ballooning trophy fish population. The gold standard remains the Mississippi River, where the world-record 124-pound blue cat was landed in 2005.

But professional watermen aren't celebrating the explosive growth of the blue catfish.

Over the past two years, commercial watermen have faced tight new restrictions on harvesting blue crabs the once plentiful cash crop of the Chesapeake Bay.

State marine officials banned winter dredging for blue crabs and also severely limited the amount of crab pots watermen could drop into the bay.

Some days, those crab pots end up filled with blue catfish.

Ernie Bowden is president of the Eastern Shore Watermen's Association and a voting member of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. Bowden sees blue catfish as an unchecked menace.

"They're eating full-size crabs; it's not just the juveniles. We're talking about 5-inch crabs," Bowden said. "It takes a lot to feed a 102-pound fish."

Curbing the growth of the blue catfish is difficult because fishermen are allowed to catch only one blue catfish measuring more than 32 inches a day. Further, there is almost no commercial market for larger fish because the Department of Health has a "do not eat" tag on any blue catfish more than 32 inches long because of the prevalence of toxic mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs.

Bowden believes harvesting restrictions and restoration efforts designed to nurture growth in other species are fueling the rise of the blue cat.

"We'll never recover the herring, the shad or the blue crab with a predator like that out there," Bowden said. "We're paying a lot of money for catfish food."

Bowden said he expects the General Assembly to see legislation brought forward by watermen who want to rein in the blue catfish population.

Greenlee said the anger is understandable.

"Last year, these guys got hammered with restrictions, and they're frustrated," Greenlee said. "When you're a crabber and you pull up your pots and they're full of blue catfish, I understand the frustration."

But Greenlee doesn't believe blue catfish are harming the resurgence of blue crabs and American shad. Greenlee said there is little overlap between the habitats of blue catfish and blue crabs.

"Watermen don't really want to hear it," Greenlee said. "But shad are depleted regionally in places where blue catfish don't live."

At the marine institute, Latour led a study on the diet of small blue catfish, finding menhaden, croaker, river herring and shad. He said fish make up as much as 60 percent of a blue catfish's diet.

"I'd say the lion's share of their diet was fish," Latour said. "But we don't have a lot of data on the 50-plus pounders."

Latour said the blue crab population has suffered from the loss of thick sea grass beds that protect growing juveniles.

Latour also said crabs that move further upriver risk getting eaten by blue catfish.

"The blue catfish isn't built to eat a hard shell," Latour said. "And there is limited overlap in habitat."

But Latour acknowledged that there are tough questions about what the blue catfish does to other species.

"To what extent are we compromising our efforts?" he asked.

The blue catfish falls under the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries because it is a freshwater, game fish.

Watermen are asking the VMRC to step in and regulate the fish.

Jack Travelstead, chief of fisheries management for the VMRC, said the commission isn't trying to get regulatory authority over the blue catfish. Officials simply want better data on what blue catfish mean for other species.

"The concern is that we need to understand the ecological effect," Travelstead said. "What don't we know?"