Missouri could learn from Red River keepers

According to Steve Steinfeldt, I’ve been spending a few days challenging the Red River’s magnum channel cats every August since 1991.

Wayne and I will have to take his word for it, because, being a generation his senior, neither of us can remember exactly when I started making annual trips to North Dakota.

One thing’s for certain: Neither Wayne nor I have any intention of digging through 17 years of records to prove Steve either right or wrong.

Steve, who’s a news and sports reporter, made use of the staying power of the Red River’s attraction as part of the introduction to an in-depth interview I granted him after he, Wayne and I had gotten off the river after an evening of catfish angling.

After stating I probably got to fish “all over the country,” he asked why I kept scheduling time to fish the same water year after year.

I explained that my only brother, Wayne, and his wife, Carol, lived in Drayton, which was the town’s primary draw.

The fact that their house sat within a stone’s throw of a Red River boat ramp from which we could launch Wayne’s fully equipped catfish boat didn’t hurt.

Boat ramps and fancy boats don’t mean much if there aren’t any fish to be caught.

Steve was interested in this year’s fishing stats.

Since his readers and radio listeners will have them, it seems only fair that you do, too.

In 20.2 hours of fishing time, all of which was done with rod and reel between 8:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., Wayne and I caught 40 channel cats that weighed a total of 334.9 pounds.

Eighteen of those fish weighed more than 10 pounds and four of them weighed more than 20 pounds.

I didn’t make any verbal comparisons between catfish angling in Missouri and North Dakota during the interview, but I couldn’t suppress my thoughts.

There are more trophy (over 10-pound) channel cats between Grand Forks and Pembina than there were in 1991.

During that same time period, the once-prolific trophy (over 20-pound) blue catfish in Truman Reservoir and in the Osage River west of it has virtually collapsed.

One dramatic difference between the two rivers is how each river’s fishery is being regulated.

North Dakota, Minnesota and Manitoba share the Red River, but they’ve agreed on an identical set of regulations, the cornerstones of which are a prohibition on any angling method other than a maximum of two tended rods and reels and a five-fish daily and possession creel limit with only one fish more than 24 inches in length.

Missouri, which controls all but the upper reaches of the Osage River, has ignored what once was — and what might be again — one of the nation’s most prolific trophy blue catfish grounds.

Missouri has a five-fish daily, 10-fish possession limit on blue cats with no maximum size restrictions anywhere except for a ridiculously small portion of the Truman Dam tailrace.

By far the most important difference between the Red and the Osage rivers is the attitude of the majority of each stream’s anglers.

Both local and visiting anglers on the Red River have adopted a catch-and-release mentality that goes beyond what the law allows.

Few trophy catfish are removed from the Red River, and many anglers don’t keep any catfish at all.

(The river contains walleye, sauger and northern pike, so catfish conservationists don’t have to go home hungry.)

Most Osage River fishermen believe that any blue cat that comes into a boat should stay in that boat, often with little regard for either the legal limit or for the probability that the fish will be eaten before it freezer burns.

Missouri blue cat anglers could get away with maximizing their harvest if they only kept blue cats less than 24 inches long, because the Osage River system does not have a blue cat recruitment problem; it has a retention problem primarily involving larger fish.

I’d like to see both the blue cat and the flathead managed as trophy species much like the state already manages muskies.

Does anyone really need to kill more than one big catfish per day, especially when he or she can take four smaller cats home for the table?

Based on my experiences in North Dakota over the past 17 years, having a seemingly unlimited number of big catfish to battle and then release to fight another day is as good as fishing gets.