Blue catfish are an invasive species in the Chesapeake Bay region. So, authorities are encouraging anglers to thin them out. Delmarva Public Media's Kevin Diaz caught up with angler KC Stangl who thrives on bringing them in.
RUSH: Millions of invasive blue catfish are threatening the ecological balance of the rivers and streams of the Chesapeake Bay. This has challenged the area sports fishermen to thin them out. A seemingly impossible task, but nobody has taken the challenge up with more gusto than one retired angler from Cambridge, Maryland. Delmarva Public Media's Kevin Diaz has caught up with him at the Tuckahoe Bridge Landing on the Eastern Shore.
STANGL: Okay. He took the bait and he traveled with it. So since the hook is in fairly good, it's just a matter of reeling 'em in not too fast.
DIAZ: This is K.C. Stangl in action on Tuckahoe Creek, near where the channel flows into the Choptank river below Denton. A November beaver moon is still setting on a clear morning sky. It's brisk, and he's pulling in his 1014th blue catfish of the year. That's something of a record for a single angler on the Eastern Shore where the "blue cats" are regarded as an invasive species, threatening the native crab and rockfish.
STANGL: They're predators. They're not mud skimmers, and like the native channel catfish.
DIAZ: Stangl, a retired naval officer living in Cambridge, loves to be out on the water. He'd be here anyway, throwing lines off the boat ramp, below the Highway 328 bridge.
STANGL: I'm lucky, I'm retired, and I'm living my dream.
DIAZ: But this dream also has a purpose. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources encourages sports fishermen around the bay to pull out as many blue catfish as they can rather than release them back into the water. In fact, they even offer grants to fund tournament prizes up and down the shore. That includes K.C. Stangl's Midshore Fishing Club in Cambridge. They're also taking aim at another invasive species, the so-called Snakehead.
STANGL: Now, the Snakeheads are invasive as well. They seem to have found an ecological niche, which stays kind of in balance with the rest of the ecosystem. In other words, they've kind of gotten to the point where they're, but they're still predators. They eat a lot of the fry from the Striped bass and the Perch and things like that. So I mean, they're still considered invasive and we wish we could get rid of them, but we never will. But there's a pretty good industry and interest in both from eating and sport fishing for that, and it's starting to catch up with the Blue Catfish.
DIAZ:When it comes to Snakeheads and particularly Blue Catfish, anglers like K.C. Stangl point out that restaurants and diners have a role to play too.
STANGL: One of the main things that we're trying to do is make people aware that they're great eating, and if we can create a marketable catfish industry here, then that would help a lot.
DIAZ: Creating a marketable catfish industry around the bay would still take some attitudinal change.
STANGL: There's a culture here that some people like catfish, a lot of people don't. In the South, it's the Rockfish of the South, but in my opinion, the white mild meat of the blue cat is up there with Rockfish and they're fun to catch. I mean, I think they give you a bit of a fight.
STANGL: On this day. There seems to be no sluggishness in the bites. Stengel has caught a dozen of the whiskered fish in the past hour. When Blue Cat number #1014 bites, it's a young one, perhaps 10 inches. That's a good thing according to K.C.
STANGL: The thing I like about the small fish is that it represents that much more of a Blue Cat's life span that's been taken out of the river.
DIAZ: Now it's time to dispatch the little whisker fish humanely with a sharp probe into the brain.
STANGL: Most of them, like I say, I dispatch and I return them to the river in a poetic justice for the crabs.
DIAZ: For Delmarva Public Media, this is Kevin Diaz on Tuckahoe Creek Bridge Landing.
