Blue catfish
Ictalurus furcatus
Also known asHigh-fin blue
Water parameters
Minimum tank: 1000 L per individual at harvest size.
Feed and growth
- Feed protein
- 32% target
- Daily feed (warm)
- 2.50% of body weight
- Daily feed (cool)
- 1.00% of body weight
- Max density
- 50 g per litre
A 4000 g adult eats about 100.0 g of feed per day at optimum. 10 fish at adult size: ~1000 g daily.
Legality
Rules vary by jurisdiction and change over time. Verify with your local fisheries or wildlife authority before stocking.
| Jurisdiction | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Maryland | legal | Actively encouraged as harvest target to reduce Chesapeake Bay invasive population verified 2026-05-14 |
| Virginia | legal | Same Chesapeake context; commercial harvest encouraged verified 2026-05-14 |
Unlisted jurisdictions default to "check local regulations".
Origin and habitat
Ictalurus furcatus is the largest catfish in North America, the biggest member of the family Ictaluridae. It is native to the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Rio Grande river basins and Gulf drainages running south from Texas into Mexico and Central America. It favors big rivers with moderate to strong current, holding in deeper, faster water than channel catfish. Wild fish can pass 60 kg; the IGFA all-tackle record is a 64.86 kg fish taken in 2011 from Kerr Lake on Buggs Island, Virginia. Blue catfish are predatory omnivores: smaller fish eat insects, crayfish, and mollusks, while larger ones turn to fish such as shad, river herring, white perch, and menhaden, and in coastal waters even blue crabs. The flesh is white, firm, and noticeably milder than channel catfish, which makes it a premium product. Stocked outside its range for sport, the species has become a serious invader of the Chesapeake Bay: fish put into Virginia's western-shore rivers decades ago proved more salt-tolerant than expected, spread through the bay, and now number in the hundreds of millions of pounds, eating their way through native crabs, shad, and other species.
Climate and outdoor ponds
- Climate
- temperate (handles seasonal swings)
- USDA zones
- 5–11 (winter low around -29°C or warmer)
- Heating needed
- no
- Cooling needed
- no
Care notes
A big-bodied catfish for growers with real tank volume (500 L minimum, 1000+ better for grow-out). It runs larger and more predatory than channel catfish, which brings both upside (bigger fillets, premium mild flesh, more value per fish) and headaches (cannibalism, larger systems, more aggression). It grows a little slower than channel catfish early on but to a much larger ultimate size, reaching 500–1 g in twelve to twenty-four months on a standard catfish pellet and continuing well past 2 kg given time and feed; blue catfish respond better to a higher-protein feed, around 32 to 36 percent, than channel catfish do. Feed conversion sits around 1.5 to 2.0. Temperature tolerance is broad, roughly 5–32°C with best growth near 24–28°C. The fish handles low oxygen well, though not quite as well as channel catfish; keep dissolved oxygen above about 3 to 4 mg/L. Stock on the lighter side, 10 to 20 g/L, since blue catfish are more aggressive, and grade tightly: never mix fish that differ by more than about a third in length, or the larger ones will eat the smaller. Fingerlings come from catfish hatcheries in the southeastern US, and the fish is legal in most states without a permit, with harvest actively encouraged in the Chesapeake region to knock back the invasion.