“The sun finally slips beyond the horizon, and dark entrenches the river. This is it, the time they used to come out and bite, back when things were good.. You load up your bait on your rods and toss it out.. Kick your legs up and wait. Minutes….and now hours pass.. one sheep head and a couple snags later.. nothing.. it’s getting late and with a sigh…you pack up your equipment and head it home. It’s been two months since your last catfish catch, and you’re doing better than most people out of the river.. Oh why didn’t we do something sooner? Now that the population has been decimated, it will take years, even with restocking, before catfishing is feasible.. If only we had filled out Joel’s fish logs when we had the chance…” 
Maybe a slightly dramatic view of the future, but a very possible one given the slowly growing popularity of catfishing, paired with the people that think they are rough fish and mistreat them as such(the majority of fishermen believe it or not.. I’ve had hardcore walleye fishermen tell me they sting you with their whiskers like a jelly fish, and others tell me they throw them on shore with the sheep head).
Now throw in the fact that most conservation efforts and funds received from OUR purchases of licenses go mostly towards…dun dun dunnnnn… Walleye, Muskies and Northern… Something I’m willing to bet the majority of the people that frequent this forum, couldn’t care less about(or maybe you care some but would still prefer to see efforts made to ensure a sustainable cat population).
The Metro East Fisheries DNR department has been trying to get a push to get more information on catfishing pressure, populations, harvests and such in order to ensure such a future does not come about, however, the research project would benefit greatly from input from anglers, and as a show that there’s a healthy population of us out there chasing cats. The more information they get and the more accurate the information is, the more likely the DNR is to start shifting some of our dues towards our hobby.
That being said as of last year, they had a fish log that had been distributed, initially anglers took a big interest, but apparently by the end of the year only a handful were returned. This is an effort to repopularize the use of the log for anglers to track their time fishing, catches, harvest, locations ect.
I’ve uploaded the log to Google Docs, in order to save it to your computer just click the link and go to “File” “Download” inside the Google Docs interface.
Once your log is full there is instructions on the first page of the DNR email address to send it to: [email protected]
The information is confidential, only the DNR see’s it, and it’s aggregated with the contributions of other anglers.
Please show your support for your community and YOUR hobby by participating in this program.. It can only help us in the long run..
Call me.. 
..rrr. 
.r
……..rrr