With a unanimous vote by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Commission, Commercial fishermen keep their right to keep a “trophy” catfish. But like everyone else, their limit is one catfish 34 inches or longer per day.

President of the East Tennessee Commercial Fisherman Association, Verlin Clark, asked the commission to do away with all size limits on catfish for commercial anglers. Not only for economic reasons, but biological ones as well.

“You’re going to run into a problem down the road with all these big catfish,” Clark told the commission. “They’ll eat a lot of the sport fish.”

TWRA chief of fisheries, Bill Reeves, disputed that theory.

“You have something called dynamics of bioenergetics,” Reeves said. “That means if you expend all your energy trying to catch your food, you’re going to starve to death. Catfish aren’t going to be out there swimming around the lake looking for game fish to eat.”

Several commissioners voiced their opinions about the change and quizzed the commercial fishermen about selling catfish live to out-of-state pay lakes. Live catfish would bring in more money then those sold for meat.

Approximately 900,000 people bought a regular fishing license while only 348 people bought a commercial license. The commission used their surveys and reports showing a vast majority of Tennessee sport fishermen like the limit currently held for catfish.

Read and discuss this article at the link below:
One big catfish for all

Surpassing the previous state record by 22 pounds, the new Louisiana’s state record channel catfish weighed in at 50 pounds and had a girth of 24 inches. David landed the fish out of Buhlow Lake on April 3, 2007. The previous record was caught in January 2004 by Rebecca L. Connella.

Greer doesn’t give credit to “Luck” or “being at the right place at the right time” for his record setting catch. Instead, was due to divine intervention.

“I haven’t been to church in 15 years,” David said. “That evening, when I arrived, I looked up in the sky and said, ‘Lord, if you will let me catch a fish 3-foot or better, I’ll start going back to church.’ Needless to say, he answered my prayer.”

David was using a No. 3 white perch hook and a shiner. Not liking the mess, Greer says he doesn’t fish with anything else.

“I like to tight line, so I have little bells on the end of my rod to let me know when I have a fish,” he said. “Suddenly, the bells started going crazy and my rod bent double. I grabbed it right away as my drag was screaming with the amount of line being taken off. I don’t like to set my drag too tight, because if you catch a big fish, it can snap your line.”

“I didn’t know what I had, but I managed to turn it,” Greer said. “It ran back to deep water and I turned it again. I was hollering and cussing, hoping that I wouldn’t lose whatever I had on the end of my line. This couple, who were about a 100 yards away, must have thought I was crazy. They didn’t know exactly what was going on.”

Read more and discuss this news story at the link below:
Greer lands state record channel catfish

Announcing Chef Jim’s Catfishin’ Penn Reels website.

Chef Jim is becoming well known for his great work with Penn Reels. The love he has for his Penn Reels really shows in his work. Reading through Jim’s Sponsor Section on Katmasters, you can see that his customers back up this claim. Chef Jim doesn’t just sell reels, he also offers a full service job for Penn Reels that is sure to please. If you are looking for parts for Penn Reels, he sells them too.

When it comes to Penn Reels, Chef Jim is the man.

Introducing the new Katmasters Top 100 Catfishing Websites. Websites are ranked by Unique Page Views, with the top 100 displaying there special rank number mini banner on their website. Here are a few things that makes the Katmasters Top Catfishing Websites different then other Top Lists:

Banners - When you register your site, you tell us the link to your banner. The max size a banner is 468 x 60. When a visitor clicks on your Stats button on our website, your banner will be displayed along with a link to your site, your site description, site reviews and your stats. The top 2 websites will also be able to display there banner with there listing on the ranking page.

Reviews - Visitors are able to review your website. Not only review your site, but give it a rating form 1-5. This info will be displayed on your Stats Page and your rating will display on our Ranking page if you are one of the top 2 sites.

Movement - You are able to see a websites movement in rank. Looking at a listing, you will quickly be able to see if a web site’s rank on our list as went up, down, or stayed the same.

Categories - With using categories, visitors can filter listings by choosing the type of catfishing websites they want to see. For example, If a visitor selects “Tours and Teams”, they will see a ranking of just the Tournaments and Teams web sites.

A special thanks goes out to Greg Cummings (Nightfisher) for making the header image and the ranking buttons. Thanks Greg for all your help in getting this thing rolling.

If you have a catfishing website, click on the link below and get your site submitted.
Katmasters Top 100 Catfishing Websites

With-in 12 days, 24 eggs was hidden. Eggs was through the Katmasters site although most eggs was hidden inside forum posts. We had a awesome prize packet donated by the contest sponsors.

Items not pictured but in the packet are: Katmasters Catfishing Club hat and a SCA shirt.

A special congrats goes out to the three members that searched and found all 24 eggs:
jremines
lostamonster
Fishmac

Sence there was a tie, we hid one last egg at 8pm tonight for these three members to find. The first member to find the egg wins the entire prize packet. About 9:30pm, the contest was over with “lostamonster” finding the last egg.

Congrats to Allen for finding all 25 eggs.

Thanks again to our contest sponsors for all the prizes.

Chef Jim’s Penn Reels

SCA Website

Chat about this contest at the link below:
The Great Egg Hunt forum thread

Congrats to Eliott on winning the Katmasters April 2007 Catch of the Month. Eliott tells hows his fishing day starts out horrible with many things going wrong. The ending is a different story as he lands his personal best flathead catfish. When someone suggests that he keeps the fish to enter in a fishing contest with a $100 prize, you guys will enjoy hearing that Eliott released this fish to be caught another day.

“But I quickly decided that wouldn’t be right (I think you guys would agree with me on this decision) I wouldn’t sacrifice the life of this fish for a hundred bucks anyday.” Says Eliott.

April 2007 COTM Page
Read the forum thread for this winning COTM

During his vacation in Barcelona, Frank Warwick landed a 9ft catfish out of the Ebro river. The catfish weighed in at 203lbs and was one pound bigger than the highest recorded with the international fishing association IGFA.

“It nearly pulled me in with it. Two of the guides who were with me had to grab me round the waist. It is like being pulled by a bus - it’s an unbelievable force.” Said Frank.

“It took three quarters of an hour to reel it in and it really does feel like you are fighting with something the whole time.”

Read and discuss the article on the Katmasters forums, at the link below:
9ft catfish in the Ebro River - Record Breaking Catch

I am pleased to announce that our MySpace page now shows correctly in Fire Fox browsers. A special thanks to VintageKitten for getting it all in place.

At time of posting, we are up to 110 MySpace friends. Thanks to everyone that help to spread the word and getting your family and friends to add Katmasters as a MySpace friend. Please continue to spread the word and lets see if we can hit the 200 friend mark real soon.

You can view our myspace page at the link below.
Katmasters MySpace Page