Historic reintroduction of blue catfish in Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is reintroducing blue catfish to the Ohio River.
Brian Whipkey, Erie Times-News
Anglers in the Pittsburgh area may be catching 50-to 60-pound blue catfish several years from now as part of an ongoing reintroduction effort of this native species of fish.
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission is in its second year of stocking blue catfish in the Ohio River in the Point State Park area of Pittsburgh and Sewickley.
Blue cats swam in the Steel City until the early 1900s when the water became polluted.
“If it wasn’t for man, pollution and building of the dams on the three rivers, they’d still be here today,” said Gary Smith, the Fish and Boat Commission Area 8 fisheries manager. “Hopefully, we are correcting a wrong that happened with pollution to restore them here in the three rivers.”
In the fall of 2022, the agency stocked 80,000 fingerlings in the river.
“We had requested 40,000 blue cat fingerlings to be stocked in the fall of 2022,” Smith said. “Our hatchery had surplus fingerlings, so we ended up stocking 80,000 fingerlings into the Ohio River.”
Fingerlings are 2 to 4 inches long. The survival rate for them is low because they can become food for the other predators in the river.
In 2023 and beyond, the agency started stocking yearling blue catfish which are about 8 to 10 inches. Each year through 2026, they are requesting 10,000 yearlings to be stocked. “Their survival will be better,” Smith said about the larger fish.
Last year, there were extra fish available and a total of 14,000 yearlings were stocked. About 10,000 of them came from West Virginia and averaged about 9 inches long. The remaining yearlings came from the agency’s hatchery in Tionesta and those fish were about 5 and 6 inches long.
Smith has been looking at the success rates of blue catfish in Kentucky’s portion of the Ohio River and said it takes 17 years for one of them to reach about 35 inches long, possibly weighing 30 pounds. And they will keep growing from there.
In West Virginia’s portion of the Ohio River he said the state record was broken in December and measured 50.5 inches and weighed 69.45 pounds.
“That’s impressive,” he said. In Pennsylvania, he said years down the road 50-60 pound blue catfish may be swimming in the Pittsburgh area, too.
The challenge is the number of years it takes catfish to get that size. Pennsylvania has a shorter growing season compared to the other states to the south.
“We expect slow growth. We see that in our flathead catfish in the Three Rivers. For a flathead catfish it takes 15 years to get to 14 inches,” Smith said.
First stocking: Tiny blue catfish, able to grow near 100 pounds, were reintroduced to the Ohio River in PA
Smith knows of Pennsylvania anglers who travel to other states to target blue catfish.
“There’s definitely a following for blue cats,” he said.
Joe Granata of Monaca, Beaver County, enjoys fishing for a variety of catfish in western Pennsylvania and is looking forward to the blue cats getting big in Pittsburgh’s waterways.
He helped stock the original blue catfish fingerlings in 2022 around Point State Park. He isn’t aware of anyone catching any of them yet.
“It takes several years,” he said for the fish to grow to a catchable size. Anglers may have caught some of the small fish and didn’t realize they were blue catfish.
Granata has caught blues in West Virginia and Virginia where the fish have been living for years. He knows of people catching some upwards of 50 pounds. Granata said the blue cats hit the bait harder than flatheads.
“To fishermen, that’s exciting,” he said. In the river, he uses cut bait and live baits for a variety of catfish species.
He mostly targets flathead catfish in western Pennsylvania where they also get to be about 50 pounds. In the eastern part of the state, he said the flatheads grow faster and get larger.
The new state record for flatheads was caught in the Susquehanna River on May 14, 2023. Mike Wherley, 46, of Fayetteville broke the existing record with his 66-pound, 6-ounce catfish from the river in Lancaster County.
Monitoring the blue cats
The blue catfish that have been stocked in Pittsburgh appear to be surviving. Smith said a blue catfish was captured during their night electrofishing surveys in October on the Pittsburgh Pool of the three rivers. The fish was found on the Monongahela River, just two-tenths of a mile upstream of Point State Park in Pittsburgh.
“Other than that, we have not gone out to target them. The plan is in 2025 to go out on the Ohio River targeting blue cats, doing daytime, low frequency electrofishing. That’s the primary gear biologists use to collect blue cats,” he said.
They will also place hoop nets and trout lines out to catch and inspect blue cats.
“Hopefully, we will pick up a couple then,” Smith said about monitoring the early success after three years of stockings. “I’m not expecting to see a lot of blue cats,” he said. In 2028, another monitoring effort will be conducted. “Hopefully, we will see more blue cats then.”
Every three years they will continue to do monitoring studies of the population.
“Based on what we are seeing, we hope to move to the lower Allegheny River and the Mongahela River for yearling stockings for five years,” he said.
Female blue catfish will start reproducing after they get to be 6 or 7 years old or in some cases they need to be a few years older. Smith is hopeful they will start spawning in the Pittsburgh area. “That’s the plan, that’s the hope, to establish a naturally reproducing population,” he said.
Only in western Pennsylvania
The goal is to keep the blue catfish in the Ohio River area where they are native fish. In other streams, these large fish could be detrimental to the ecosystem.
“The only place they are native in Pennsylvania is the Three Rivers, the Ohio River, the lower Allegheny and the Mon (Monongahela) River,” he said.
Anglers shouldn’t be moving blue catfish to other waterways.
“We don’t even want to see them in our lakes here in western Pennsylvania. They are a big river fish. Only native here in Pennsylvania to the Three Rivers,” Smith said.
In the eastern part of the state, he said unfortunately blue cats have been showing up in the Delaware estuary and Chesapeake Bay.
“They are a large predator, top of the food chain, they need to have lots of area and lots of forage and one of their main forage is gizzard shad but they are omnivores. They will eat other things as well, other fish, freshwater mussels and macro invertebrates. They are adapted to the big rivers,” he said. “Because they are only native to the Three Rivers, we don’t want them elsewhere in the state because it’s possible they could have a significant impact on native fish populations in the Susquehanna and Delaware basins. They can significantly change the ecosystems in places where they don’t belong. We see that with insects, mammals and fish.”
Granata is looking forward to seeing heavy blue cats in Pittsburgh.
“I think it will be awesome. I think it will be good for the environment, too, just to have another apex predator back in the waterways to keep everything else in check,” Granata said about the return of blue catfish. “They’re native here.
“Selfishly as a fisherman, it’s going to be awesome, but I think for the environment, too, the ecosystem of the rivers I think it will be good as well.”
He is concerned that too many catfish will be caught out of the waterways once the population is established. Right now anglers are permitted to keep 50 catfish a day, similar to the regulations for perch and crappies. “It takes them forever to get big,” he said.
Smith said the agency is considering a catch-and-release only regulation on blue catfish in the three rivers area. “To get them established. It’s something we are looking at,” he said.
The blue catfish are expected to expand the opportunities for anglers throughout the year.
“The biggest difference for me would be, it’s an all-year fish. Blue catfish are still pretty active in the winter months as opposed to flathead catfish. Once the water temperature in our rivers gets to the mid 40s, the flathead catfish really slow down,” he said.
Granata said the winter months he travels to other states for blue cats as they are active feeders regardless of the temperature. “It can be 10 degrees below zero and they’re out there feeding,” he said. When the blue cats become prevalent in Pittsburgh, they will create a year-round fishing opportunity, including in the winter months.
“We’re definitely excited. We just have to be patient. When they get to that size, it will be game on,” Granata said about the local catfishing community. “Until then, let’s just hope they are all doing well down there and there’s agood population swimming around there and establishing themselves again.”
Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website’s homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors.
