How bad are catfish for our waters?

[jh92]

So my local club has issued a ban on returning catfish caught on our canal. If you catch one it needs to retained, it will be removed and released into a local pond. Originally the idea was to have it killed, but I think a lot of the anglers kicked up a fuss about it hence now they moving them to a pond. 

My question is, how bad are these fish for our waters? We have otters killing fish all the time, cormorants putting holes in to fish. Boats and pollution releasing chemicals etc into the water. 

From my understanding the ea won't put anymore stock into the water until the catfish are removed.

Are catfish really that bad to our waters? 

 

 

[B B]

I fished a popular day ticket carp water that had stocked catfish and I was shocked with the ferocity of them feeding on the sliver fish and no doubt small carp. Got woken up in the dark hours over the two nights by some nice carp and a couple of cats and as I was playing them most of the lake was in turmoil with the cats on the rampage. 
If you believe in Karma you defo do not want to come back as a sliver fish in a lake stocked with cats. 😳

[Golden Paws]

I can see where the EA are coming from, there are an alien invasion species. It's one thing stocking them in a contained lake but when they get into canals or river systems, they can end up anywhere. I suspect some catfish anglers deliberately "planted" fish over the years so they had waters closer to home. We already have pike and perch to predate and keep the ecosystem healthy and catfish are are an additional and unnecessary addition in my opinion.

[salokcinnodrog]

2 hours ago, Golden Paws said:

I can see where the EA are coming from, there are an alien invasion species. It's one thing stocking them in a contained lake but when they get into canals or river systems, they can end up anywhere. I suspect some catfish anglers deliberately "planted" fish over the years so they had waters closer to home. We already have pike and perch to predate and keep the ecosystem healthy and catfish are are an additional and unnecessary addition in my opinion.

There have been reports of catfish getting into The Broads system, and I know after a bank collapse after floods some got into the River Gipping, but were quickly retrieved.

 

 

[chillfactor]

The stance on invasive species seems to always change once the said species gets a good foot hold . Look at zander i was catching them 25 years ago & the EA policy was to knock them on the head , it was against the law to return them . Now there just another species we have in our waterways.  Should think in a decade or two big cat fishing in all our waterways will be a common pursuit for specimen anglers . 

There's been the odd big cat caught out of rivers by me going back years now , quite often by barbel anglers .

[salokcinnodrog]

3 hours ago, chillfactor said:

The stance on invasive species seems to always change once the said species gets a good foot hold . Look at zander i was catching them 25 years ago & the EA policy was to knock them on the head , it was against the law to return them . Now there just another species we have in our waterways.  Should think in a decade or two big cat fishing in all our waterways will be a common pursuit for specimen anglers . 

There's been the odd big cat caught out of rivers by me going back years now , quite often by barbel anglers .

Look at carp...

Not indigenous to the UK, brought over possibly by the Romans and definitely in the 13th and 14th centuries.

[Carpbell3]

You still have to go out your way for a cat near me one water is now classed as a garden pond by the EA due to the sturgeon in it, the EA hit it regularly for licence checks as the rumor went round you no longer needed a rod licence they hade a few big fines out of it last year.

 

Also, I rember when carp and pike would be killed by match anglers on canals and rivers long time ago some of the match waters and anglers were still on about it back in the 90s.

Coomb Abbey used to insist on removing Zander that was back in the 90s too, they now get proper zander anglers on the lake as they do get big in there, the overflow allows them into the river and canal system go lure fishing on any bit of canal and you pull plenty of small zander out.

[marker]

i don't like them myself, the bigger carp are generally ok but if your water has any decent tench, bream, crucians, rudd or roach etc you can say goodbye to them. you'll not find much in the way of birdlife either, anything duck sized generally gets taken, i even saw one try to take down a full grown swan once.

[kevtaylor]

19 hours ago, marker said:

i don't like them myself, the bigger carp are generally ok but if your water has any decent tench, bream, crucians, rudd or roach etc you can say goodbye to them. you'll not find much in the way of birdlife either, anything duck sized generally gets taken, i even saw one try to take down a full grown swan once.

I think its nonsense to say that if you have cats you wont have prey fish, there is a balance found.  Big cats are in Bluebell Lakes yets all hold good numbers of Tench, Bream, Roach , Perch etc and I've seen these prey fish masses on sonar in the winter so I know for a fact they are rich in prey, despite holding many huge cats, many!

I was a young angler when they used to say kill Pike because they eat everything, I left one on the bank then thought hang on this is nonsense I'm never doing that again.  It was ignorance on the part of the clubs or whoever was supposed to be running the venue.  Predators will go for the weak first and foremost and that can be seen as a good thing for a healthy population.

Biggest threat to prey fish is Cormorants, carp Otters.

I'm not a cat fan at all btw

Edited March 23, 2023 by kevtaylor

[elmoputney]

There was a 62lber caught on the lakes I fish last night, blooming massive it was, there was a report of a duck eating catfish on their too. Still plenty of boilie eating rudd so they aren't doing that well at eating them all 😂

[oldcarper]

3 hours ago, kevtaylor said:

I think its nonsense to say that if you have cats you wont have prey fish, there is a balance found.  Big cats are in Bluebell Lakes yets all hold good numbers of Tench, Bream, Roach , Perch etc and I've seen these prey fish masses on sonar in the winter so I know for a fact they are rich in prey, despite holding many huge cats, many!

I was a young angler when they used to say kill Pike because they eat everything, I left one on the bank then thought hang on this is nonsense I'm never doing that again.  It was ignorance on the part of the clubs or whoever was supposed to be running the venue.  Predators will go for the weak first and foremost and that can be seen as a good thing for a healthy population.

Biggest threat to prey fish is Cormorants, carp Otters.

I'm not a cat fan at all btw

But it can take some time before the balance is met. 

Zander went through my local canals leaving very little, and took at least 10 years or more for things to start balancing out.

And who's to say it'll happen again, as there becomes more prey fish, and so the predortary fish population will increase.

[salokcinnodrog]

4 hours ago, kevtaylor said:

I think its nonsense to say that if you have cats you wont have prey fish, there is a balance found.  Big cats are in Bluebell Lakes yets all hold good numbers of Tench, Bream, Roach , Perch etc and I've seen these prey fish masses on sonar in the winter so I know for a fact they are rich in prey, despite holding many huge cats, many!

I was a young angler when they used to say kill Pike because they eat everything, I left one on the bank then thought hang on this is nonsense I'm never doing that again.  It was ignorance on the part of the clubs or whoever was supposed to be running the venue.  Predators will go for the weak first and foremost and that can be seen as a good thing for a healthy population.

Biggest threat to prey fish is Cormorants, carp Otters.

I'm not a cat fan at all btw

On my syndicate the cormorants, old age and natural mortality have taken out the roach and bream. There are the carp, tench, plenty of small perch and pike, with possibly a few small roach.

 

The pike appear to be self limiting. The larger females take out the excess smaller males who also take smaller pike and silvers, these females will also munch on tench.

Due to my mobility issues, I didn't do any pike fishing trips on there this year, so I don't know if the 23 I had last year is still around, but I saw only one other 20 this season.

2 hours ago, elmoputney said:

There was a 62lber caught on the lakes I fish last night, blooming massive it was, there was a report of a duck eating catfish on their too. Still plenty of boilie eating rudd so they aren't doing that well at eating them all 😂

I've seen videos of Wels catfish catching pigeons (

)

I was on Virginia wondering what snapped me off after a run I couldn't stop on my SP's. Not long after a catfish was seen and landed on the promontory between the main lake and the SunFun coach company end.

 

My mate Bruce landed a catfish on Trigga boilies from Yew Tree. I was in the swim next door and only had carp. 

[elmoputney]

25 minutes ago, salokcinnodrog said:

On my syndicate the cormorants, old age and natural mortality have taken out the roach and bream. There are the carp, tench, plenty of small perch and pike, with possibly a few small roach.

 

The pike appear to be self limiting. The larger females take out the excess smaller males who also take smaller pike and silvers, these females will also munch on tench.

Due to my mobility issues, I didn't do any pike fishing trips on there this year, so I don't know if the 23 I had last year is still around, but I saw only one other 20 this season.

I've seen videos of Wels catfish catching pigeons (

)

I was on Virginia wondering what snapped me off after a run I couldn't stop on my SP's. Not long after a catfish was seen and landed on the promontory between the main lake and the SunFun coach company end.

 

My mate Bruce landed a catfish on Trigga boilies from Yew Tree. I was in the swim next door and only had carp. 

I had a run I couldn't stop on virginia too many moons ago, I believed that was a catfish, that was also where the duck eater was 

[ouchthathurt]

 I’ve had a few of the slimy critters on 12mm fish meal pop ups, over a kilo of premier fishmeal bottom baits. I wouldn’t target them, but they don’t half fight! This lake doesn’t have much in the way of silvers, it has a small head of carp that are rarely targeted, not sure what the cats feed on, maybe the silver population is stronger than I think, no one targets them, so how would we know? There’s no cormorants though… 

[salokcinnodrog]

6 hours ago, elmoputney said:

I had a run I couldn't stop on virginia too many moons ago, I believed that was a catfish, that was also where the duck eater was 

I'd figured it out that you were talking about Earith.

Originally Ian didn't think or know there were any catfish in Virginia, but I think at some time Pingrees and Virginia  had joined in floods and a couple of cats decided to go for a visit.