I've seen records of them reaching good sizes - just never personally seen them. I didn't find a record for the biggest in MD, but in my experience the ones here are small(er).
Madtom or just a baby catfish?
- Thread starter Nicole.Ortiz
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I've seen records of them reaching good sizes - just never personally seen them. I didn't find a record for the biggest in MD, but in my experience the ones here are small(er).
I've caught few big yellows that goes over 14" and that's not rare. You just needs go deeper where most larger bullheads are found. But they're not smallest bullhead species.
Perhaps you fished in wrong places or you fished in a lake that holds a population of stunted bullheads or a lake with low numbers of predatory fishes. I caught lot of yellows in 10-12" range with few ones over 12-14" then we do lot of trapnets and gillnets to count the fish populations and there will be always some big bullheads in both nets.
Yeah with your fishing experiences but that doesn't means they are smallest bullhead species. If you want to know what's smallest species of Bullhead family, it has to be one of these three species: Flat, Snail and Spotted bullheads. They don't get big and rarely reach more than 10"
Nah didn't keep either of those two. I agree the second one looked pretty beat up :/ Unfortunately those red spots are present on most fish caught out of that lake. Did keep another one that is smaller than those two with no visible parasites. He spends 90% of his time hidden in a log haha, only comes out at night to eat.
I've caught about 20 of these catfish so far, 19 of them were that size (under 6"), and one that was *maybe* 10". Other people pull out that same size. The channel cats are anywhere from 12-20", but they are stocked. Also stocked are trout, bass, and hybrid sunfish. Maybe the parasites coupled with the stocked fish account for the smallies?
Not sure who said they were the smallest... not me.
I just agreed they stayed small(er). The latter mentioned bullheads would be neat - but I'm too far north. Those spotted ones are pretty beast.
I do not agreed with the yellows stay smaller. Here its blacks are usually smaller than yellows in Minnesota yet I've caught both over 15".Not sure who said they were the smallest... not me.
