Now, no one’s insinuating, even meanly hinting, there aren’t any giant flathead catfish left in the Rock River.
That would be silly. For years, serious “cat jerkers” have flocked to the Rock from widespread climes. Why, even Wisconsinites accept the sordid truth they’ll have to journey to this state’s portion of the Rock and buy an Illinois license if they want to catch some really fine cats.
But all that attention kind of makes the natives jumpy. This is, after all, their personal fishing hole. Their own little secret. And the more it leaks, the more people come to thrash these waters-and not just for the glamorous walleye and smallmouth bass that live here in wretched abundance. They sample again and again the Rock River’s immense population of tasty catfish.
Now, that’s a problem. If more and more people actually seek out these catfish-both flatheads and channel cats-who knows what will be left for locals to catch? Why, the next thing you know, there’ll be size and creel limits to protect these fish. Why, who’s to say Wisconsin will not have the audacity to try to haul away some of these catfish to stock its own barren waters?
Uh-oh. Well, don’t look now, but that deed already has been done. In 1992, the Illinois Department of Conservation acceded to Wisconsin’s request for a truckload of Rock River catfish to revitalize a flathead fishery in its own portion of the river above Lake Koshkanong. A shipment of 125 fish in the 10-pound range occurred as part of the ongoing courtesies of wildlife and fish trades that exist between states. At the same time, another 176 flatheads from the Rock were turned loose in other Illinois waters.
When the word finally escaped this summer through a local magazine article, the rumor mill exploded. Regional fisheries manager Pete Paladino might as well have hung his eyeglasses on pork rinds the way his ears were fried.
In certain bait shops and anglers’ lairs, Paladino was blamed for every ailment perceived on the Rock, from alleged declines in the catch of rough fish like carp, buffalo and sucker (the choice fish of many), to a perceived reduction of minnows, to the virtual disappearance of flatheads “every time they seine the river.”
From his office in Sterling, which aficionados dub “Smallmouth Bass Central” for the great love of his fishing life, Paladino wonders about all that seining. You see, he doesn’t really seine fish to ascertain numbers, preferring more efficient trap nets and electroshocking for his surveys. And when he does collect fish to analyze, they generally go swiftly back into the river.
In fact, when Paladino allowed that cataclysmic Wisconsin intrusion in 1992, his biologists actually collected three times as many larger flatheads than they were willing to transport.
“They took out only the little ones, and I mean the little ones were 10-pounders,” Paladino said. “Everything else went right back into the river.”
These generally were fish in excess of 20 and 30 pounds, and one certainly topped 50. Paladino can say this because a 46-incher broke the 50-pound scale in his boat.
“I figure it was in that range because the year before we weighed a 39-incher from the Rock at 44 pounds,” he explained.
One net with 21 fish was so heavy it couldn’t be lifted into the biologists’ boat. Those fish were released right where they were, a few miles below Dixon, in what now must be one of the better big fish honey holes on the river.
Unlike bottom-feeding channel cats, flatheads are fast-growing monsters that snack on anything from one-pound fish to waterfowl. In five years of growth, a channel cat will reach 14 inches and nearly a pound. A flathead born the same year should achieve 22 inches and five pounds.
So far, the biggest flathead taken from the Rock this year was a 49-pounder near Oregon, followed by a 40-pounder at Dixon. Last year, at least two cracked the 50-pound range. Paladino thinks they go much higher. He says he knows commercial fishermen who have released 60- and 70-pounders.
That’s another bone of contention. The Rock has seven licensed commercial anglers who pursue carp, drum, buffalo and the like. While they are supposed to return all catfish and gamefish they inadvertently catch, there are suspicions of occasional abuse. Merlin Howe, a retired game warden, recalled busting two commercial boats below Como whose owners had kept seven shovelnose sturgeon.
Paladino previously had his ears pinned back for trying to implement a ban on bank poles, trot lines and commercial catches in an 11-mile stretch of the Rock between Oregon and Grand Detour that has been turned into the state’s first catch-and-release smallmouth stream. He backed off the catfish restrictions when anguished letters and phone calls poured into Springfield.
Paladino is about to begin a catfish survey at five locations from Rockton to Prophetstown.
“We’re going to use basket and trap nets, fiddler nets, hoop nets and 100 hooks on trot lines,” he said. “We’ll try to get 100 fish from each location to get a feel for the little ones, to see how they’re developing.”
So far this year, Paladino has stocked 88,800 walleye fingerlings to atone for the loss of a year class because of the near-record low water in the Rock this May. He also is about to release 9,000 six-inch smallmouth in the no-kill area to make up for a bad hatch. He said this will be the first stocking of smallmouth into a large Illinois river, following earlier plants in the Apple and Kishwaukee rivers and Pine Creek.
To allay some rampant rumors, Paladino plans a series of informational meetings in Oregon, Dixon and Sterling this fall, when biologists can explain the fishery and try to answer questions. But one will be easy to answer. There is nothing wrong with the Rock River’s catfish, Paladino insists.
“It’s amazing to me that anything else is alive in that river,” he said. “There are so many of those predatory big flatheads eating everything in sight. When a fish gets to be 40 pounds with a mouth that is 16 inches wide, it obviously can eat pretty nearly anything it wants.”
