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.

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One big catfish for all