Courtesy Christopher Halley
Early last April the Mississippi blue catfish record was shattered when angler Eugene Cronley of Brandon, Miss. captured a 131-pound cat following a harsh half-hour battle. He captured the fish near the town of Natchez in the southern reaches of the Mississippi River.
Cronley’s enormous fish was 56.6 inches long with a girth of 41 inches and it was captured from the very same river location where the previous state record 95-pound and 101-pound blue felines were landed.
A couple of months after Cronley’s record catch, Christopher Halley of Brookhaven, Miss. landed a 104-pound blue catfish from the very same location of the Mississippi River utilizing a trot line, setting a state record for that technique of fishing.
Obviously, 100-pound class Mississippi blue catfish are more typical than some anglers think, which appeared uncommon to lots of people who believed that it took lots of years to grow fish of such extravagant percentages.
However some current clinical sleuthing by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks (MDWFP) has actually shown that huge felines can reach incredible percentages in a portion of the time lots of anglers think.
The MDWFP aged Cronley’s 131-pounder at twenty years. Halley’s 104-pound cat had to do with 14 years of ages.
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Courtesy MDWFP
State biologists aged the huge felines by seeing the fish otoliths under a microscopic lense. Otoliths are frequently referred to as “earstones.” They are hard, calcium carbonate structures situated straight behind the brain of bony fish. Counting development rings of fish otoliths is done similar method trees are aged, by their trunk development rings.
” They (MDWFP) called me recently and informed me how old my 131-pound catfish was,” Cronley informed the Mississippi Clarion Journal. “I figured a minimum of thirty years. He got a great deal of weight in twenty years. He was consuming respectable.”
” I believed perhaps thirty years,” Halley stated about his 104-pound blue cat.
Halley stated some individuals thought his cat was 100 years of ages, or more.
It prevails to see blue felines up ten years of age, Jerry Brown director with the MDWFP, informed the Clarion Journal. Brown has actually seen some Mississippi blue felines approximately 25 years of ages.
” In the Mississippi River they have plenty to consume, so they can get to that (100-pound plus) size,” Brown stated.
