any one caught a blue in minnesota?

[whisker_lust]

Ive heard of blues coming out of the mississippi from some older guys i met last summer. wondering if any one has encountered something of the sort?

[DTro]

No Blues in MN. Not saying there isn't 1 or 2 swimming around, but nothing has been proved in decades.

Counting the anal ray fins is about the only way to positively identify them.

A lot of people notice a lighter blue color and automatically assume that it is a Blue Cat. Not so

[whisker_lust]

yeah i can see that. I am trying to find this article i read a while ago about the DNR stocking the st croix with them in the 70's but i cant find it. it didnt make much sense to me that they would do that, or why they would stock a river. I have seen channels that look sort of like a blue, but being from missouri and that i have caught them, the only ones i have ever seen are reall really fat, never slender like channels. I wonder about cross breeding between the 3 species tho, is it possible?

[blakeb]

i want to think that they exsist in small populations, loners that migrate possibly, i think that if they are i will get one eventually.

[ec30_06]

I think before all the locks and dams there may have been a few that made it to southern MN in the summer

[mrklean]

i had a guy tell me he saw someone catch a 15 pound blue around the st paul area but he was a little out there to if you know what i mean

[MDNRMetroRivers]

MNDNR did in fact stock blue catfish into Lake St Croix in the 70's. None of them ever showed up in any sampling gear and were not reported by anglers. But even biologists can misidentify them. They were pretty small (4-6 inches???) and were hauled up here from Alabama or something like that.

There might be a straggler blue cat swimming in MN but I have yet to see one. This is the upper end of their range and the lock and dam system has prevented them from having a larger presence here.

Blue catfish and channel catfish can interbreed. I don't know if it has been documented in the wild, but the mad scientists were artificially crossing them to create a hybrid in hopes of having a faster growing, more aggressive fish for stocking ponds and for a faster growing fish resistant to the many diseases in channel cats for aquaculture. I don't think it panned out like they had hoped. But apparently the cross could be very advantagous to the aquaculture industry. Cost goes up slightly to produce the fish but could be recouped with the gains the hybrid would provide. Problem is there is very limited blue catfish broodstock as the entire industry is based on channel catfish. Flatheads are a different genus and cannot cross with blues or channels.

Joel

[DTro]

Thanks for the insight!

[mrklean]

cool info thanks

[blakeb]

thanks for the good read.

[whisker_lust]

well that was the best thing ive read in a long while, THANX!!!

[Roman_K]

Very cool read. Wasnt there a story a while back about a guy who claimed to have caught a 50 lb Blue out of the MN? But then they determined that it was brought in out of state

[archerystud]

My grandfather and I used to catch some occasional blues on the Minnesota, but that was 25-30 years ago.

[icehousebob]

I've only seen one that I was sure was a Blue. He was wearing sunglasses, had a goatee, and was playing a saxaphone. He claimed to be from Nawlins, but you know how those catfish lie.

[JBMasterAngler]

Blues require cleaner water than what channels can tolerate don't they? Not that they were every very common up here, but I'd think now would be as good a time as any for blues to make a comeback up here.

My dad used to hangout with an old river rat on the croix 30 to 40 years ago, and says they caught every fish that swims in the river, including a few blue cats.

[MDNRMetroRivers]

There was a blue catfish registered as the state record and was reportedly caught in the MN River in 2002. It was 52 pounds. I don't remember if someone reported him or how it came about, but his story kept changing a little bit and DNR looked into it further and he finally confessed that he caught it out of state and brought it over to claim the record. I think the fish came out of the Missouri River in SD. So he got pinched for lying on a state form and transporting live fish across state lines, stuff like that. The record was removed in 2003. I noticed a couple years ago it was still listed in the IGFA record books. I notified somebody who was supposed to contact IGFA to have that fixed but don't know if they removed it or not.

[carpmanjake]

my PB cat may be a blue... not sure.

sure looked like a blue to me. but i was only 14 at the time. it had a blue tint, compared to all the other cats which were brownish.

[Mudcatman]

Thats a Channel for sure. Looks like a Red River fish...

[carpmanjake]

Thats a Channel for sure. Looks like a Red River fish...

thanks. wasnt sure about that. yea it is from the red.

[blakeb]

i have had a few like that jake, does make a guy wonder.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Aside from counting the rays of the anal fins for a 100% positive ID, it is pretty easy to tell the difference between channels and blues if you know what to look for. The long edge of the anal fin on a channel is curved while it is straight on a blue. Also, blues tend to have a "hump" in front of their dorsal fin. Go head and google some pics--these features work pretty darn well.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Blue:

Channel: