Virginia's giant catfish are spreading

In Japanese sci-fi movies, the monster created by pollution is Godzilla. On "The Simpsons," it's a three-eyed fish named Blinky.

In Virginia, it's a gape-mouthed predator called the blue catfish — and there are too many to name.

The James River has become a nationally known fishing hole for the freakish giants, and last month an angler caught an apparent world-record 143-pounder in Kerr Reservoir near the North Carolina line.

In the 1970s and'80s, when people did such things, Virginia officials put small blue catfish in the James and other state waters to give anglers a new challenge.

Beware what you ask for.

Pollution from sewage plants and farms fed tiny plants that fed tiny animals that fed small fish that fed the blue catfish. The catfish exploded in numbers and size.

It was like planting invasive kudzu vines in Maymont and showering them with Miracle-Gro.

Today, blue catfish constitute up to 70 percent, by weight, of all fish in parts of the James, according to Virginia Commonwealth University scientists.

These catfish aren't slugs. The big adults are top-of-the-food-chain predators that swallow anything they can get in their huge mouths, including fish, birds and muskrats.

Many Virginians embrace the big cats because they draw anglers and their money, estimated in the millions, from across the U.S., primarily to the tidal James below Richmond.

"Most of the time it's not if you are going catch a fish but how big is the fish going to be," said angler Jerry Webb of Danville, who runs the website JamesRiverCats.com.

In recent years, blue catfish have begun showing up in Maryland, which isn't so crazy about the gift that keeps on growing.

"These tidal tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay are incredibly valuable nursery grounds for a significant number of marine species," said Tom O'Connell, Maryland's fisheries director. "This is the first time in history that we've had an apex predator in these areas 365 days a year, 24/7."

Maryland research shows the voracious blue cat's diet includes American shad and river herring — once abundant, economically important fish that are barely hanging on now.

Spurred largely by Maryland's concerns, a panel of the federally led Chesapeake Bay Program is considering ways to control blue cats. Those options, on paper at least, include eradication.

When word of that got out early this year, Virginia anglers erupted, raging on websites that the government wanted to wipe out the fish that laid the golden egg.

"We were just dumbfounded," said Mike Ostrander, a James River fishing guide. "Nobody knew this was going on."

Other options before the panel include periodically killing catfish in waters where they are trying to get established, and encouraging more commercial fishing. Virginia has a small, $1 million-a-year harvest now.

Experts say it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the blue cat, especially in strongholds like the James.

"It would be cheaper to do another Apollo moon program," said Greg Garman, a VCU fish ecologist.

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From his boat on the James near Varina, Bob Greenlee put an electric charge in the water, and dozens of disoriented catfish rose to the surface.

Greenlee, a state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries biologist, pointed out a big cat plowing along the surface like a submarine. A second boat raced up, and a co-worker netted the beast.

As Greenlee weighed and measured it — 46 pounds and nearly 4 feet long — the slimy, blue-gray creature beheld him with beady eyes and gaping mouth.

"A lovely fish," Greenlee said wryly as he swung it back into the river.

The fish was so big it was hard to fathom that it was 97 pounds shy of the pot-bellied behemoth from Kerr Reservoir.

"A 46-pound fish is big," said biologist Scott Herrmann, "but it's a wee little baby compared to the world record."

The work that day in late June, called electro-fishing, was designed to learn more about another animal, the flathead catfish. But 90 percent of the fish the biologists saw were blue cats.

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The blue cat is a freshwater fish, but lately it has been showing up in brackish waters as far down the James as Newport News.

Could it cause problems for parts of the already stressed bay?

"Our concern is these fish are getting bigger, there are more of them, they are spreading, and they are also showing increased tolerance" for salty waters, said John Bull, a spokesman for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

"We're not sure what that ultimately means, which is why we have a level of concern about it."

It could be that the blue catfish, like a Wild West desperado, gets blamed for more than its own dirty work.

For example, biologist Greenlee says there is little evidence to show blue cats are devastating shad and herring. Those fish, he said, are also in trouble in places blue catfish don't inhabit.

But other experts say the blue catfish, a native to the Mississippi River region, clearly does not belong in Virginia waters.

"It is a bit alarming" to read about 100-pound-plus catfish in Virginia, said Mary C. Fabrizio, a Virginia Institute of Marine Science associate professor.

"I'm always surprised, and maybe I shouldn't be, but they seem to be getting larger and larger."