Photo by Michael Skinner

It's very telling that Louisiana's catfish are so abundant that anglers like Donnie Prince of Claiborne Parish can catch them with bare hands. Probing sunken logs, caverns beneath boat ramps and sunken barrels, the lifelong resident of the Bayou State frequently comes away with large catfish, some in excess of 50 pounds.

But anglers don't have to take up "noodling" (as the practice is known) to catch cats in our state. Louisiana's loaded with catfish from one end of the state to the other. Whether you fish the areas near the coast or the northernmost reaches near Shreveport and Monroe, cats are plentiful, and not at all hard to find or to catch.

It surely won't be a surprise to most anglers that some Louisiana's best areas for catching catfish lie along the state's most prominent rivers, specifically the Ouachita, the Atchafalaya and the Red. But the whiskered creatures are just as prevalent in some of the state lakes as well, including D'Arbonne, Salvador, Poverty Point and Cataouatche.

Though different tactics are required to catch cats at each location, each is worth a try, according to both anglers and fisheries biologists.

RED RIVER
A special boyhood memory of mine from decades ago is of catching catfish along the Red River near Campti. It was exciting when my dad gave instructions to my brother and me to dig a bucket of earthworms from behind the cow barn for use on the fishing trip.

Armed with rods and reels, we set up camp on the sandy banks of the "Big Red" (as we called it). We lobbed earthworms impaled on stout hooks into the current, using heavy sinkers to keep the bait at rest; the rods were propped onto forked sticks. Our job was to watch the rod tips for bites. Once the rod tip dipped and pulsed, and the hook was set, it was anybody's guess as to what was on the end of the line. It could be a freshwater drum or a paddlefish. But more than likely we'd find ourselves doing battle with either a blue or channel catfish.

The Red River has undergone drastic changes in the years since my boyhood excursions. Once known for its swift current and the rusty color from which its name derives, it has been tamed, and its waters are now far less turbid than they were formerly. In fact, movement of the water is barely noticeable except during flooding.

These changes came about when the last of five locks and dams were completed in December 1994, creating five pools between Shreveport and Marksville, south of Alexandria. Instead of a rapidly moving stream, there are now pools that more closely resemble lakes along the margin of the river.

Ronnie Christ, a fisheries biologist for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries who works out of the District One office in Minden, oversees the Red River for the agency and is accordingly well acquainted with the astounding catfish resource that the Red River offers today. Periodic electroshock sampling reveals that the numbers of catfish showing up in the samples has been impressive indeed.

"Our equipment has settings that allow us to key in on what species of fish we're trying to stun for samples," Christ said. "The first time we tried it for catfish on the Red River? Quite frankly, I was amazed. The water was covered with catfish. They were all around us. This didn't just happen once. We found fish of such high numbers each time we did the electroshock samples."