Hand Grappling Blue Catfish in the Main Channel of a Mississippi River

Abstract

Blue catfish Ictalurus furcatus were hand grappled, primarily by using scuba gear, from 30.5-cm-square × 122-cm-long wood boxes, May through July 1990–1993 in the Tallahatchie River, a principal tributary of the Yazoo River in Mississippi. During January through August 1990–1994, blue catfish also were collected with hoop nets (4.3 m long, having seven hoops with 1.07 m diameters and 3.81-cm-bar-mesh netting), which are standard gear for riverine fish stock assessments in Mississippi. During the study, 638 grabs yielded 29 blue catfish, and 638 overnight hoop-net sets yielded 71 blue catfish. Hand grappling caught larger blue catfish than did hoop netting. Mean total lengths (TL) of blue catfish captured by hand grappling and hoop netting were 77.3 em (SE, 2.1 cm) and 48.3 cm (SE, 0.8 cm), respectively. There were also differences in length-frequency distributions between methods, which confirmed hand-grappling selectivity for larger blue catfish. Overall. the hand-grappling catch rate for the entire study was about 24–25 grabs per fish captured. The overall hoop-netting catch rate was about 9–10 net sets per fish captured and about 50 net sets per fish captured for fish 60 cm TL or longer, which was the minimum size captured by hand grappling. Siltation in conjunction with strong currents and fluctuations in water level created logistic challenges to hand grappling. Hand grappling, as a specialized fishery, should be viewed as another component in the suite of environmental and sociological concerns linked to conservation initiatives for floodplain river ecosystems in the United States.