In addition to stunted growth, might make you a belligerent SEC fan or dress up like Billy Ray Cyrus for your profile pic...

Eating those bottom feeder fish have many side affects apparently....

Lol... I wouldn’t be here today if my ancestors had that sissy “only eat things that come from clear cold water” line of thinking ...dang spoiled yankee mentality lol

I eat bass, bream, crappie, cats, heck I’ve even tried gar and carp before. Just last Sunday the manager at the plantation called and said “Bring the family and poles I want to have a fish fry before the big game tomorrow night” We started at the pond near the shop and in 30 minutes had 25 bass to eat. They were anywhere from 10” to 2 pounds and man they ate good!!
My son and his boss go on a trip every summer and come back with coolers of blues and flatheads. They have enough filets to put on a fish fry to feed 50+ folks and plenty for the employees of the plantation to take home and freeze.
And for the record we do have pickerel down here. Just nothing but bones from what I’ve seen. Y’all can have them, lol.

Whats it take to educate people that flatheads are NOT bottom feeders but predators? Blues are primarily predators also.

Here's some educating for you, re bluecats.
They eat a LOT of vegetation, esp when young.
At least here in the Chesapeake drainage.

We used a stratified random design to collect stomachs from 16,110 blue catfish in tidal freshwater, oligohaline, and mesohaline segments of the James, Pamunkey, Mattaponi, and Rappahannock Rivers. Indices of diet breadth and omnivory reveal that blue catfish are generalist omnivores with some of the highest diet breadths ever observed in an estuarine fish species, while trophic level calculations demonstrate that blue catfish are a mesopredator occupying lower trophic levels than previously claimed. Cumulative prey curves revealed that large numbers of stomachs are necessary to adequately characterize the diet of blue catfish, thus previous diet descriptions of this species should be considered with caution. Blue catfish feed primarily on invasive aquatic vegetation and Asian clams, though the economically-valuable blue crab Callinectes sapidus is also consumed regularly.

Lots of nice channel cats can be caught on live bait, too.

We're talking apples and oranges here! Chesepeak Bay is salt water or at best brackish, river cat are fresh water. Maybe that makes the difference, or are they a seperate species or sub species?

You guys are all really missing out. If you look close I think you can see some of Nessy sourdough in the back there.

Yea our fish are so nasty . Our lakes are so polluted. Our ways are so stupid ! That’s why most northern states are losing residents at a record pace. Not many people going north unless they are illegal! Just saying
How’s that nephew?

Well ADC, I was hungry til I saw that.
Thanks for the diet aid.

Zim

You don't like sourdough bread Zim?

Na, it was that flower tablecloth that was unappealing.

Zim

As a commercial salmon fisherman I probably shouldn't say this, but I sort of agree with you. I think I can explain the problem many folks have with salmon. There are five different species of pacific salmon, and one species of farm raised atlantic salmon that you will find in the market. They all have distinctly different characteristics, plus, how good a particular salmon will taste depends on when during it's life cycle it was caught and how it was handled (bled, iced, etc). Some of the salmon I see in the store looks great, but probably half of it is not fit to eat. If you don't know what to look for you eventually will be disappointed.

Additionally, if it is not kept in a commercial freezer it isn't worth eating after a couple of weeks in the freezer, the oils start to oxidize and go rancid. I catch thousands of pounds of salmon every summer, I freeze a few pounds for myself, and if it isn't eaten by the end of September it doesn't get eaten.
Halibut on the other hand will keep for longer than a year in a home chest freezer and be just fine.
I'm sure it all has to do with the oil content; halibut a very lean.

I can personally vouch for the salmon waggler made at the NTA shindig in Minnesota a few years back.
In fact my wife conned him out of the special "waggler sauce" recipe for it that she still makes today.

Zim

DaveP, a college discourse doesnt change that i said primarily. when they get get big enough Im interested in them they are not eating salad anymore. I dont think flatheads ever do.

Wow, I almost forgot about the sauce; was it the white sauce? I'm still a little embarrassed that I overcooked those sockeye a bit.

16,000 + stomaches is quite a few.

I personally have seen LOTS of vegetation in the stomaches of 30,40+ lb bluecats.
I used to think it was incidental, ie, swallowed with prey or other foodstuffs, but now not so sure.
Did seem to see it more in winter, so maybe when other food was scarce?

Same fish.
I said Chesapeake drainage, that includes freshwater/ river systems.
They are pretty salt tolerant though, I've caught them between puppy drum, lol.

I think they are best described as opportunistic omnivores, but heavier on fish as they age/ grow.

Wolfie, In the northeast, trout is king. There's big money in stocking programs. You get up into the great lakes region and dang near every stream gets stocked with steelhead and browns. So people tend to get testy when they have predators get in and decide to eat all those pelletheads. You should have seen the absolute war that went on when the gobi got into the great lakes. It was nothing to go out on Erie and see gobis floating all over the place from fishermen who had caught them and slammed them off the side of the boat and left them to float.

In PA they'll put blues in rivers that aren't generally known as trout waters.

I think PA just stocked a huge number of blues in the Ohio river.

I believe there's always been catfish around here(Lake Michigan) just not many of them.I've fished alot here and never caught one nor saw one caught.But lately the guys fishing walleye in the spring have been taking catfish out of Big Bay De Noc.I asked a biologist about it and he pretty much dismissed it,saying they're catching bull heads.Well,a picture out of Little Bay De Noc showed a caught catfish of ,if I remember right,30+ pounds!That's a pretty big bull head! So they seem to be showing up more and more.