The Science Behind Trophy Blue Catfish — and Why Winter Is the Best Time to Catch Them

On a crisp winter morning in the mid-1980s, two men stepped into the Southwest (Oklahoma) Fisheries office to ask if we had some scales big enough to weigh their catfish. Everyone gathered outside to witness two of the biggest fish I’d ever seen from freshwater. Richard Hopper and Gerald High, two veteran catmen, had been juglining that cool February day on nearby Lake Lawtonka, and netted two huge blue cats.

At first, I didn’t know that little Lawtonka even held blue cats, much less any this big. The scale proved that each fish weighed over 50 pounds. Secondly, I didn’t know that catfish would bite in the winter, yet here hung the evidence of a potential trophy...

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