Jeff Manning and Dieter Melhorn are staunch believers in tagging and releasing their larger catfish. The tags, obtained through the Catawba Catfish Club, are numbered to identify the fish and have contact info to report recaptures to share information.
“We’ve learned tag-and-release can provide excellent information on Lake Wylie catfish,” Melhorn said. “We have found some very interesting data on growth rates as well as fish movements.”
One catfish that Melhorn originally caught exhibited remarkable growth. The fish weighed 18 pounds when he first caught it. Two years later, it was caught within 100 feet of where it was first caught ,and it weighed 33 pounds. One year later, Manning’s brother caught it from the same basic place, and the fish weighed 48 pounds.
“It’s not a scientific study, but it fun, and we’ve found some very interesting patterns,” Manning said.
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