Reported by GreenvilleOnline. If there were such a thing in the Chinese New Year, 2014 would have to go down as the year of the catfish. In South Carolina in 2014, two state records for catfish were set, another monster blue catfish was caught from an Upstate reservoir and some first-of-their-kind regulations were put in place to protect blue catfish in the Santee-Cooper Lakes. Although blue catfish exist in nearly every one of the contiguous United States, the native range of this fish is the Mississippi River basin from Pennsylvania to Texas as well as spiraling northward to Nebraska and on a gulf-ward slop from Mobile, Alabama, to West Virginia.
Before 2014, when most people thought about catfish — primarily blue catfish, which were introduced into South Carolina back in the 1970s — they thought about the Santee-Cooper Lakes in the Lowcountry. However, in the past year, places like Lake Monticello, Lake Murray, Lake Wateree and even Lake Hartwell produced catfish of definitive sportfish proportions yet they have no regulations regarding their harvest in our game laws.
Throughout most of its native range, the blue catfish is listed on a state-by-state basis among freshwater species as a Gamefish, with all of the protections and statuses granted thereto. Gamefish status prohibits or severely regulates the commercial harvest of these fish as well as placing size and creel limits pertaining to harvest by sport fishermen.
Outside its native range — which includes South Carolina — blue catfish are not listed as Gamefish. Outside of regulations set forth this past year for lakes Marion and Moultrie, there are no creel limits and no size limits on the sporting harvest of blue catfish in the state. Commercial harvest is not regulated specifically for the species but by the body of water.
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