(upbeat music) - When people think about catching catfish, they tend to think about soaking a stinky bait in rivers like the Mississippi or Minnesota, but in this state, that's not the only way to do it.

Today we're in the Cold Spring area to learn a little bit more about the Sauk river chain, at a unique fishing opportunity that all started because of a decision made in the 1970's.

that all started because of a decision made in the 1970's.

(upbeat music continues) We're back at the boat with catfish guru, Darren Troseth of Three Rivers Fishing Adventures, this time, on the Sauk river chain.

So we got a nice foggy morning here for us Darren, and, we're goin' out for catfish What's the plan?

- We are.

So, what's happening in this body of water is these fish are kinda relating to the weeds around the edges here, so basically we'r gonna be tossing bobbers right around the weed edge here.

- It seems, strange to me to use bobbers and fish a little shallower for - Yeah, it's kind of a unique situation, and that's why I, you know, thought it'd be fun to come out here, because, it's, that's not how you normally fish these catfish.

And it is a late summer thing, kind of August into September, and, it's a little different.

It's different than even what I fish catfish all the time, and it's even unique to me, so that's why I come here and like to do it, 'cause it's a little different, and it's a lotta fun.

- [Bret] What are we usin' for bait?

- So, (Darren laughs) we are using, we're usin' shrimp.

- Shrimp.

- So, believe it or not, I got this for $3.99 at Hy-Vee.

(Bret laughs) Yesterday, so, you know, for a 50 count for $3.99, you can't beat that, I mean, that's cheaper than night crawlers.

- And if you don't catch anything, you still got something to eat.

- Yeah, bring 'em home, throw 'em on the grill, you're good to go.

(Darren laughs) - Let's get some fish.

- Yeah, this is gonna be fun.

(upbeat music continues) Here you go, you can take that one.

- All right.

- I'll just hit up on the bow here, but.

We're just gonna work along the shoreline.

- You know, we joke about bait lookin' delicious all the time, and, "Oh, if we don't catch anything, "we can always eat the minnows," but, this bait does look delicious, I would eat this.

(Darren laughs) Maybe, are they pre cooked, or are these raw shrimp?

- You wanna use the raw shrimp, the cooked ones will not work, so.

- Okay, why is that?

- That's a good question, I think it's probably 'caus most of the smell is out of 'em after you cook 'em maybe.

- Oh, okay.

- I think they're goin' for the smell.

(upbeat music continues) There you go fish, fish on.

Oh, this is a nice one too, real nice.

- All right.

(fishing reel whirring) - oh man.

- This is a really good one.

(Darren laughs) I'll just stay up here if you wanna net 'em back there.

- [Bret] Sure.

- [Darren] That's a really good one.

Wow, oh, missed it.

(Darren laughs) - All right, here he comes.

There we go.

Wow, nice, toad.

- That's a good fish to start off with.

Think that's over 30 inches, pretty nice.

(upbeat music continues) Big old head on that thing, that's a big male there, big wide head.

- That was a heck of a fish to start off with.

- Yeah that's fun, I mean, that's what I'm talking about when you come up here, it's just, you know, throwin' along the shore line, and bang, 28 incher, I mean, that's a decent cat, that's, in fact, a 28 incher is a Minnesota master angler, so I mean, that's, first fish, like, 10 minutes in here.

(Darren laughs) - Now I've, you know, maybe won't say that size is common up here, but they're getting more common maybe, or they've been more common lately?

- They are, yeah, so the DNR has increased the bag limit to try to thin out the amount of cats in here.

And, as they've done that, the size has increased, the population's gone down, the sizes increased.

And that's what, it's really gettin' my attention now, 'cause you're catchin' fish like that quite often actually, - In 2013, the average siz was about 16-and-a-half inches, and one-and-a-half pounds.

In 2024, the average size was, oh, I think it was just about 22 inches, and almost four pounds, so.

- [Bret] Channel catfish are native to Minnesota, but they've only been in the Sauk river chain since the mid 1970's.

- There was some issues wit the high numbers of bullheads, and small black crappies, crappie numbers were through the but the growth was really slow.

And so, in order to try to decrease those, the population of the bullheads and the crappies, to help increase, stimulate growth, they want to put a bigger predator in there, so they introduced channel catfish in 1976.

From 1976 to 1986 I believe it was, they stalked upward of, oh, about 60,000, fingerlings to yearling channel catfish.

- [Bret] Even though these fish were brought in for good reasons not all locals and anglers were fond of the new introduction.

- I started as the area manager in 2013, and I started working with the lake association.

We started talkin' about issues that there may be, and one was catfish.

There was a conception that by locals that there's just way too many the catfish, that's all they're in here.

And so it was kinda part of throwing 'em a ball, like we'll try and experimental regulation.

We'll increase the channe catfish possession limit to 10, which is basically double what the state is, but you can only have one over 24 inches.

We'll run that for 10 year and we'll see what shakes out.

- You're catchin' 'em on top waters, you're catch 'em with spinner baits, you know, you're fishing for other fish and all you're catching is catfish.

- So if you're encouraging people to keep some, or if you're gonna have some ya know guiding clients out here, is there a size that you're looking for for keep fish?

- Kind of that you know 20 to 24 I think is probably a good good size.

I mean, you start gettin' smaller, ya know the 12 to 15 inches, you're not gettin' a lotta meat out of it.

So, I would say probably that 20 inch range is a good eater fish.

- Well seein' a 28 to start, it, that gets you excited a little it, so.

- (Darren laughs) They fight so hard too, they're fun.

- Let's get some more.

(light music) (metal thudding) (Darren laughs) It's right there.

- Still, oh nice.

(Bret laughs) (upbeat music) (Bret and Darren talking indistinctly) Nice.

- Oh man.

(Darren and Bret laugh) You see that one go down?

Was right when you're talkin' about it too.

- [Bret] Darren is hooked up again.

(Darren laughs) - That took what, five minutes?

Another pretty decent one.

(upbeat music continues) Dang, (Darren laughs) they just bulldog.

- And you can't see 'em.

- There we go.

Not quite as big.

I guess, you know if I was to keep one, that would probably be a good keeper there, that's probably 22, 23 inches.

Ya know you'd get a nice little meal outta that one.

(upbeat music continues) - In 2013 is where we seen this, the peak of channel catfish in the Sauk chain, of about 27 per net.

2018, 2021, and then this year we sampled, we've seen the numbers of channel cats go down tremendously.

(upbeat music continues) - So, we're casting this out Darren, and you're only leaving it out there for a little bit.

- Yeah, 15 seconds at the most, And we're just, we're also moving quite a bit too, we're just workin' the shoreline try to find these active fish.

- Why are you only keepin' it out there, you're just trying to find 'em?

More about?

- I-- - Locating?

- I have found that that's the way they bite.

Like if you keep it there for a minute, they're not gonna bite, it's like, they're reacting to the sound of the bobber hitting the water, and also the sight of the shrimp falling.

Yeah, so I've found, I've cast to the same spot twice, and they'll hit it righ after I cast to the same spot.

(Darren laughs) So that's, that's how I know they're reacting to the cast.

- [Bret] There's one thing that you said, we saw some cormorants up in trees.

You said, for whatever reason, whether it's coincidence or not, you feel like, sometimes the catfish are relating to those same areas?

- [Darren] Yes, and a friend of mine came up here before me one time, and he's like, "We were catching fish "all around the pelicans and cormorants," so that's kinda where I first started looking.

And, sure enough.

So I don't know if they're eating off of fish that they're dropping in the water, maybe they're defecating in the water, I don't know, maybe they're eating that, I don't know.

(Darren laughs) (upbeat music continues) - Well we just saw one surface right over here, and, he surfaced three times, and I didn't quite cast far enough, so, he's still there.

See if I can get to him.

- [Darren] It's kind of a long cast.

- Yeah, there we go.

- There you go.

- All right.

(Bret laughs) - [Darren] Oh, nice one.

- Catfish are fun to catch.

Man, they put up a pretty good fight.

You know it's one of those fish, Darren, I think that doesn't get the respect it deserves, because of maybe the way it's classified.

- [Darren] Right.

- [Bret] Maybe the way, you know, maybe people are scared of 'em a little bit, but, man they're fun to catch.

(upbeat music continues) - [Darren] They definitely fight hard.

- Right.

(upbeat music continues) Maybe, maybe not.

(Darren laughs) There we go.

- There it is.

- All right.

Nice.

- That's a good one.

- Might be a good one to eat.

- Yeah, if you're gonna eat one, there's a good size right there.

Nice clean one.

(fish squeaking) It's talkin' to ya.

(Bret groaning) - You speak catfish?

- [Darren] That's classified.

(Darren and Bret laugh) - All right, that was fun to catch.

You can catch a lotta these up here, and they're good fish to eat, they put up a good fight, so, don't be afraid to come up and try to catch some of these catfish.

Simple, simple to catch, a lotta fun.

(upbeat music continues) All right, so the setup is pretty simple.

Darren, you just got what, 30 pound braid on this rod?

- Yeah, roughly 30 to 40 pound.

You wanna be a little bit heavier on it, but yeah, about 30, 40.

- And, a bobber, split shot, and then a circle hook right there.

And you're just tied directly onto this braid.

- [Darren] I do like having a bigger bobber 'cause it makes a little bit of a noise when it splashes, so.

- Oh sure.

But this is a real easy setup.

So this is the, you know there are so many times, and usually it's wit you Darren that we talk about it, trying to catch some of the biggest fish in Minnesota, and the gear is simple and not that expensive.

You know, like these big catfish rods, you can usually get those fairly cheap.

- Yeah, they're just ugly sticks.

- Big tough rods, yeah.

(Darren and Bret laugh) So, but they're good gear for it, and simple setup, and we're not, you know you could shore fish really for these things.

- For sure.

- And, catch some big fish here in Minnesota.

They're also delicious to eat.

(upbeat music continues) - My bobber, oh, it's under.

(Darren laughs) (upbeat music continues) That's a nice fish - Oh, that's another nice one.

There we go.

They use these whiskers to kinda sense what's goin' on around there, don't they?

- Yeah, they're, essentially they're, just a swimming tongue.

Their whole body has like sensory glands on 'em, so they can, if they you know go by with their tail, they can taste the bait and stuff.

But, generally its their whiskers.

(light music) - In the wintertime, about 12% of all anglers that fished out here, fish for channel catfish.

And oddly enough, in the summer, almost 20% of anglers are actually fishing for a channel catfish.

One thing we did see though was that about 50% of th channel catfish that were caught were all released.

And so, you know that kinda led me to believe like, well it's probably not angling that's actually decreasing the population.

So in 2021, we actually took a big aging sample from all of our fish that we caught over the summer, and what we found was that this population is a very old population.

82% of those fish were aged 10 or older.

We had fish all the way up to age 17.

Typically those fish live to around 14 to 18 years, and so what we're seeing is I think we're seeing a lotta these fish that are aging outta the population.

(light music continues) 2024 is a year that we review the regulation that was put in in 2015, depending again, what public common comes in at.

You know, I can see staying with the 10, or I could see let's simplify it and just go back to five.

And, you know, leave it like what statewide is.

- While Joe doesn't believe you can give catfish all the credit, there's not doubt, the crappies in the Sauk river chain are in a better place than they were 50 years ago.

- Back in the 70's and 80's, very very seldom would catch anything over eight or nine inches for black crappies, and now we're seein' crappies, 12 to 13 inches, especially in the spring of the year when we're doin' our targeted surveys.

(upbeat music) - [Bret] That's a good one?

- [Darren] Yeah.

- [Bret] All right, I'll grab the net.

- He's not movin'.

Get the net!

(upbeat music continues) Wow.

This might be the, oh it's about the same as that other one.

Right.

- Nice, all right.

Just that easy.

Well Darren, this has been a lot Obviously, you don't need a lotta gear for it, guys can come up here and do it on their own.

- It's pretty easy, I mean, we, I don't know what we caught today, but it was a good number of 'em, - Yeah, all right, thanks Darren - Thank you, appreciate it.

(upbeat music continues)