Tagged Channel Cat

A buddy in my boat caught a 18-20 inch channel cat in Pool 4 a few days ago that was tagged by the MN DNR. According to the Fisheries Specialist who got back to us this fish was tagged on 9/16/10 up by St Paul Park in Pool 2 of the Mississippi River. So that fish went about 33 miles and through 2 L & D’s to end up on our hook. Pretty cool. I thought some of you guys would find this interesting .

Did they tell you how big it was when it was tagged? Curious to how much it grew in two years.

Thanks for sharing Dirk.

If you haven’t already seen this, it’s an up date to the white bass tagging going on.

Quote:

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From the MN DNR:

We have had 8 tag returns from anglers and a number of tag returns from other sampling we have done with the DNR.

So far we have seen quite a bit of movement in fairly short periods of time. We have several fish both from anglers and our East Metro DNR crew that have been caught near the Apple River above Lake St Croix about 2 weeks after they were tagged below Lock and Dam #3.

We also got a return early this week from an angler near Camp LaCoupolis at the foot of Lake Pepin.

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Kinda changes the way a person thinks about fish staying in the same general area or at least the same pool.

Release?

Wow Dirk that is very interesting, that cat did some traveling. So did your friend get the info(lenth/wt) on the cat when it was tagged in 2010?

We released the fish with the tag still on the fish. Here is what the DNR Fisheries Specialist said about the fish:

On 9/16/10 that fish was 14.9 inches long. I didn’t take a weight on that fish, but Pool 2 channel cats that length are typically about 1.1 lbs. We captured that fish with our electrofishing boat and was one of 54 catfish we tagged that day. We have been removing pectoral spines from a sub-sample of catfish for aging, but we didn’t age this particular fish. Based on our other fish from Pool 2, that fish would have been 5-7 years old in 2010, so it was around 8-11 years old when you caught it this year.

I would have thought that fish was maybe 4-5 years old! Interesting…