Perennial Pest or Spirited Sportfish?
by Ross C.
Fork-tailed Catfish (Arius graeffei) have been historically despised by Queensland anglers and for most of my life I, too, considered these "croakers" to be "slimy bottom dwellers", "spiky scaleless suckers", and several other impolite names. Even though I disliked these so-called "vermin" I had many interesting run-ins with them in brackish and saltwater rivers on light gear using bait or lures (usually while fishing for Bream) as they can be hard-hitting and, if big enough, can put up a powerful performance.
This widespread non-threatened anadromous (migrating from saltwater to freshwater to spawn) fish grows up to 60cm in length and is usually caught in the 0.5 to 3kg weight range in the Brisbane area. Surrounding its mouth are supposed to be six barbels with one on each side of the upper jaw and two each side of the lower jaw however sometimes several barbels can be lost through injury such as being nipped off by predators. These three pairs of whisker-like sensory organs are harmless, unlike the Catfish's three venomous spines (one in the dorsal fin and one in each pectoral fin) that are quite dangerous and capable of inflicting stinging pain to an unwary handler or filleter if inadvertently spiked.
Catfish use vibration to communicate for long distances underwater and by grating their pectoral fin spines in their sockets can produce a sound that is amplified by the swim bladder and is usually referred to as a croak by anglers.
In recent years I have been reading with interest about freshwater anglers at Lake Wivenhoe becoming frustrated by the thousands of resident Fork-tailed Catfish smashing all sorts of lures and baits and ruining their fishing for Bass and Golden Perch. It appears that, unlike the lake's Australian Bass, Golden Perch, Silver Perch, Mary River Cod, and Saratoga stocks that have to be continually replenished by collectively stocking tens of thousands of fingerlings annually, the Fork-tailed Catfish of Lake Wivenhoe have adapted well to man-made impoundment life and have established a large self-sustaining population in this dam.
Further, the sophisticated sensory capabilities of Catfish makes them extremely efficient hunters as they can detect even minute electrical fields given off by their prey. This is why they can forage in mud and dirty water with nil visibility and can often be caught in conditions that other fish could not tolerate. Being faced with such well equipped predators it is highly likely that many Bass and other fingerlings introduced into this lake end up on the local Forkies' menu within a short time of being released.
Because of the Lake Wivenhoe "Catfish nuisance" some serious Bass fishers now avoid this waterway in summer and fish there only in winter when the Fork-tailed Catfish are much less active in the colder water conditions.
A mouth this big can fit around most commonly used baits and lures
I therefore decided that I would undertake a couple of fishing trips to Lake Wivenhoe spanning both seasons to specifically target Fork-tailed Catfish and see what sort of sport they might provide from a Kayak. The clever thing about this strategy was that if I targeted Fork-tailed Catfish it seemed that I would be pretty much guaranteed success and if other fish such as Bass or Yellowbelly also decided to have a go at my lures then I would not be overly upset about the "by-catch".
The initial outing was set for near the end of winter which is usually when the Catfish are less active because of cold water conditions (16°C surface temperature on the day I went) with a subsequent trip planned for the coming summer at a time when the water temperature can be expected to be warm and the "Forkies" in full swing "summer mode".
The first trip was on a perfect sunny winter's day with light winds and I set off trolling large (Boomerang B80UD) deep diving lures with the thought that the smaller Catfish may be put off by the size and that I would only get the attention of larger Catfish (or maybe large Bass in the same way that this lure has worked for me at Lake Samsonvale).
As it turned out, even though I trolled through several schools of fish showing up on the sounder and tried six different colours of lure at around the depth that the fish were holding, there was not a hit. When I stopped and jigged soft plastics into a school, however, on each of the four occasions that I tried this I scored a Fork-tailed Catfish.
During four hours on the lake I spent about half the time trolling in Logan Inlet where I also took the four Fork-tailed Catfish (in the 0.5 to 2kg range) by jigging a Slider Pumpkin/Black Flake 3" Bass Grub using a Gamakatsu 14g jig with size 4/0 hook.
A winter Fork-tailed Catfish taken in Logan Inlet on a jigged soft plastic lure
Based on this experience it seems that these winter schooling Fork-tailed Catfish found the 80mm Predatek lures too big for their liking at this time of the year but, on the other hand, there appeared to be no Bass in the area big enough or interested enough to strike at them either. I also concluded (from the jigging results) that most of the fish I saw holding at about 30 feet in over 40 feet of water within Logan Inlet were probably Fork-tailed Catfish.
The fish taken by jigging in deep water gave an initial strong lunge and then jinked hard in their attempts to stay near the bottom. Once moved vertically into mid-water, they put on a couple of runs before submitting near the surface but still flicked around enough when alongside to make them difficult to handle. On a light rod with four-pound line fishing from a Kayak, they certainly provided me with some fun when I got spun around a bit by the larger ones.
On a couple of occasions it was extremely interesting to observe the sounder display as the "continuous light line" of my jig descended into the "heavier lines and arches" comprising the school. After the strike I could then watch the "continuous ascending heavy line" on the screen as I pulled the fish up, as they tended to fight vertically for a while and were therefore in range during some of the retrieve.
In thinking back over more than forty years of recreational fishing, my main reasons for considering Fork-tailed Catfish to be pests were; if Catfish were around we normally caught nothing else; its appearance was thought to be "ugly"; popular humour had branded Catfish as being "scavengers" and "inferior"; its slime and spikes made it messy and dangerous to handle; it often swallowed baited hooks necessitating cutting the line and re-rigging; and, most influentially, my fishing mates considered all types of Catfish to be "rubbish that only desperates targeted" hence it would have been embarrassing for me to be seen fishing for them.
Nowadays, living in a more enlightened world where many fishers practice "catch and release" fishing, where we are accepting of things that are "different", and where even the formerly lowly Bream has recently generated new interest with its own Sportfishing competition, I think it is time that I officially cease my "discrimination" against Catfish.
As far as the handling problems associated with the spines and slime goes, the answer may be to fish for it with barb-less, large-hooked lures only and to simply use long-nosed pliers to de-hook it beside the hull or, if keeping a fish to eat, then to net it, de-hook it in the net, and tip it straight into an esky or other hard-sided container.
As of now, I personally will gladly catch any future "Forkies" that happen to come my way and will henceforth accept this species of fish as worthy of contributing to an enjoyable day's Kayakfishing in a freshwater impoundment or saltwater river system. Of course, I don't want to find "Forkies" in lakes where they aren't currently known to breed, as I'd hate them to become a problem in any more stocked impoundments.
Perhaps, if more fishers start looking at this Catfish as a serious Sportfish to complement their freshwater or saltwater catches then its true potential may be realised as, in my opinion, the "Forky" puts on a bloody good fight on light gear and, once brought alongside, adds one final extra challenge for the angler who has to then carefully handle and de-hook this well equipped adversary without getting spiked.
Maybe this fish could even be actively promoted as a target fish in those locations where it has reached "plague proportion" and one way of doing this would be to avoid using derogatory names like those mentioned in my first paragraph. Of its common names, I think that "Blue Catfish" sounds better than "Lesser Salmon Catfish" but even the colloquial terminology of "Forky" might go down okay with anglers if used in the right context (e.g., "The Fighting Forkies of Wivenhoe").
Now, if we can also somehow convince more "impoundment food-fishers" to start eating a few "Forkies" and to deliberately target them in those lakes where population explosions have occurred, then I suspect a few people involved in stocking South East Queensland lakes won't mind in the least. Perhaps, to assist this, some good recipes for preparing "Blue Catfish meals" need to be devised and publicised.
In my case all I can say at the moment is "roll on summer" so that I can get another shot at the "Fighting Forkies of Wivenhoe" when they will be "switched on" in full-predator mode and I, too, will be more "switched on" as to their potential as a target species and will hopefully by then have discovered some "serving suggestions" that really work.