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| NAS - Nonindigenous Aquatic Species |
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Common Name: white catfish
Taxonomy: available through 
Identification: Page and Burr (1991); Jenkins and Burkhead (1994); Mettee et al. (1996). Another commonly used name is Ictalurus catus.
Size: 62 cm.
Native Range:
Atlantic and Gulf Slope drainages from lower Hudson River, New York, to Apalachicola basin in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama; south in peninsular Florida to Peace River drainage (modified from Page and Burr 1991).
The white catfish was introduced into the Choctawhatchee, Tennessee, Cahaba, Coosa and Tallapoosa drainages, and the Mobile Delta, Alabama (Mettee et al. 1996); the lower White, lower Ouachita, lower St. Francis, lower Red (Lake Erling), and Arkansas drainages, and the Illinois system, Arkansas (Buchanan 1973; Cross et al. 1986; Robison and Buchanan 1988); at least 22 counties in California including sites in the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Suisun Bay, central California coastal, Tulare-Buena Vista lakes, and San Francisco Bay drainages (Smith 1896; Shebley 1917; Neale 1931; Moyle et al. 1974; Moyle 1976; Swift et al. 1993; Dill and Cordone 1997; Sommer et al. 2001; Matern et al. 2002); most basins in Connecticut (Behnke and Wetzel 1960; Whitworth et al. 1968; Schmidt 1986; Whitworth 1996); the panhandle west of the Apalachicola basin, Florida (Boschung 1992) (FLMNH has records from the Yellow drainage); the Illinois, Mississippi, and Kaskaskia rivers in Illinois (Smith 1979; Burr and Page 1986; Burr 1991); northern and southern Indiana (Nelson and Gerking 1968); reported in the Mississippi River pool 16, Iowa (Berstein and Olson 2001); the Ohio River, Kinniconick and Tygarts creeks, and Greenbo Lake in Kentucky (Clay 1975; Burr 1980; Burr and Warren 1986); the lower Kennebec River and Merrymeeting Bay in Maine (Halliwell 2003); the Charles, Connecticut, and Merrimack drainages in Massachusetts (Schmidt 1986; Hartel 1992; Cardoza et al. 1993; Hartel et al. 1996); the Tombigbee River system, Mississippi (Ross and Brenneman 1991); Missouri River drainage in Missouri (Pflieger 1997); the Truckee, Carson, and Humboldt rivers in Nevada (Smith 1896; Miller and Alcorn 1946; La Rivers 1962; Deacon and Williams 1984; Sigler and Sigler 1996; Insider Viewpoint 2001; Vinyard 2001); the French Broad River (Menhinick 1991; Etnier and Starnes 1993), the Pigeon and Hiawassee systems in the Tennessee drainage (Starnes and Etnier 1986; Menhinick 1991), North Carolina; Lake Erie, Sandusky Bay, the mouth of the Portage River, Sippo Lake east of Canton, Springdale Lake near Cincinnati, the Blanchard system, the Muskingum drainage, and the Ohio River in Ohio (Trautman 1981; Emery 1985; Hocutt et al. 1986); the Willamette River and other locations in western Oregon including the Tualatin River (Smith 1896; Wydoski and Whitney 1979; Bond 1994; State of Oregon 2000); Lake Erie and the Ohio River basin in Pennsylvania (Hendricks et al. 1979; Cooper 1983; Emery 1985); Rhode Island (Lapin, personal communication); the Clinch River in Tennessee (Burkhead, personal communication), and the Cowlitz River and Silver Lake in Washington (Smith 1896; Lampman 1946). Underhill (1986) reports this species as introduced into the Lake Erie drainage (state unlisted).
The white catfish is also established in several reserviors in Puerto Rico, possibly through stock contamination with channel catfish (Erdsman 1984; Lee 1983).
Means of Introduction: Intentional stocking for sport and food. Whitworth (1996) points out that because of this species' high tolerance for salinity, the original movement to large rivers in Connecticut could have been a natural range extension. Primary source of stocked fish in Kentucky is the James River, Virginia (Clay 1975). Stock planted in Indiana is from southeastern Virginia (Nelson and Gerking 1968). It is frequently stocked in fee-fishing lakes and other private waters. Pflieger (1997) indicated that specimens recorded from natural waters in Missouri may represent escapes from such situations.
Status: Many of these introductions have led to established populations. The Mississippi report is of a single individual presumably taken after 1989, because it was not reported in two publications in 1989. In apparent reference to its occurrence in the Willamette drainage and Columbia River of Oregon, Bond (1994) noted establishment as uncertain. A single individual was reported from Tennessee on an angler's stringer in 1993 (Burkhead, personal communication). Apparently not established in Arkansas (Robison and Buchanan 1988). Status in Tennessee is unknown.
Impact of Introduction: White catfish were apparently responsible for the disappearance of Sacramento perch Archoplites interruptus in Thurston Lake, California (McCarraher and Gregory 1970).
Remarks: Yerger (1977) and Dahlberg and Scott (1971a) considered the white catfish as introduced into the Chattahoochee River. However, Mettee et al. (1996) believe it is native to the Chattahoochee based on its abundance; Boschung (1992) listed it as introduced only west of the Apalachicola; and Lee et al. (1980 et seq.) reported it as native. We have chosen to regard it as native to the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee drainage based on early records and zoogeographic pattern. The Apalachicola-Chattahoochee drainage is commonly the western edge of the distributional range of upland species that occur further to the east, as white catfish do. This species was introduced into California under the common name of "Schuylkill catfish" (Dill and Cordone 1997).
Bernstein, N.P. and J.R. Olson. 2001. Ecological problems with Iowa's invasive and introduced fishes. Jour. Iowa Acad. Sci. 108(4): 185-209.
Boschung, H. T. 1992. Catalogue of freshwater and marine fishes of Alabama. Alabama Museum of Natural History Bulletin 14:1--266.
Buchanan, T. M. 1973. Key to the fishes of Arkansas. Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Little Rock, AR. 68 pp., 198 maps.
Burkhead, N. - National Biological Service, Southeastern Biological Science Center, Gainesville, FL.
Burr, B. M. 1991. The fishes of Illinois: an overview of a dynamic fauna. Proceedings of our living heritage symposium. Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin 34(4):417--427.
Burr, B. M., and M. L. Warren, Jr. 1986. A distributional atlas of Kentucky fishes. Kentucky Nature Preserves Commission Scientific and Technical Series 4. 398 pp.
Cooper, E. L. 1983. Fishes of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA.
Erdsman, D.S. 1984. Exotic fishes in
Etnier, D. A., and W. C. Starnes. 1993. The fishes of Tennessee. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN.
Halliwell, D.B. 2003. Introduced Fish in Maine. MABP series: Focus on Freshwater Biodiversity.
Hartel, K. E. 1992. Non-native fishes known from Massachusetts freshwaters. Occasional Reports of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Fish Department, Cambridge, MA. 2. September. pp. 1--9.
Hendricks, M. L., J. R. Stauffer, Jr., C. H. Hocutt, and C. R. Gilbert. 1979. A preliminary checklist of the fishes of the Youghiogheny River. Chicago Academy of Sciences, Natural History Miscellanea 203:1--15.
Insider Viewpoint. 2001. Fishing Records –
Jones, R.A. - Fisheries Bureau, Departments of Environmental Protection, Hartford, CT. Response to NBS-G nonindigenous questionaire. 1992.
Jenkins, R. E., and N. M. Burkhead. 1994. Freshwater fishes of Virginia. American Fisheries Society, Bethesda, MD.
Lapin, W.J. - Dept. of Envir. Manag., Div. of Fish and Wildl., West Kingson, RI. Response to NBS-G nonindigenous questionaire. 1992.
Lee, D. S., C. R. Gilbert, C. H. Hocutt, R. E. Jenkins, D. E. McAllister, and J. R. Stauffer, Jr. 1980 et seq. Atlas of North American freshwater fishes. North Carolina State Museum of Natural History, Raleigh, NC.
Menhinick, E. F. 1991. The freshwater fishes of North Carolina. North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. 227 pp.
Mettee, M. F., P. E. O'Neil, and J. M. Pierson. 1996. Fishes of Alabama and the Mobile Basin. Oxmoor House, Inc. Birmingham, AL. 820 pp.
Miller, R. R., and J. R. Alcorn. 1946. The introduced fishes of Nevada, with a history of their introduction. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 73:173--193.
Moyle, P.B., F.W. Fisher, and H. Li. 1974. Mississippi silversides and logperch in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system. California Department of Fish and Game. 60(2): 145-147.
Moyle, P.B. 1976. Inland Fishes of California. University of California Press. Berkeley, CA. 405 pp.
Nelson, J. S., and S. D. Gerking. 1968. Annotated key to the fishes of Indiana. Project 342--303--815. Department of Zoology, Indiana Aquatic Research Unit, Indiana State University, Bloomington, IN.
Page, L. M., and B. M. Burr. 1991. A field guide to freshwater fishes of North America north of Mexico. The Peterson Field Guide Series, volume 42. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA.
Ross, S. T., and W. M. Brenneman. 1991. Distribution of freshwater fishes in Mississippi. manuscript. Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, Jackson, MS. 548 pp.
Shebley, W. H. 1917. History of the introduction of food and game fishes into the waters of California. California Fish and Game 3(1):3-10.
Smith, H. M. 1896. A review of the history and results of the attempts to acclimatize fish and other water animals in the Pacific states. Bulletin of the U.S. Fish Commission for 1895, 40:379--472.
Smith, P. W. 1979. The fishes of Illinois. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL.
Sommer, T, B. Harrell, M. Nobriga, R. Brown, P. Moyle, W. Kimmerer, and L. Schemel. 2001.
State of
Trautman, M. B. 1981. The fishes of Ohio. Ohio State University Press, Columbus, OH.
Yerger, R. W. 1977. Fishes of the Apalachicola River. Florida Marine Research Publications 26:22-33.
Other Resources:
FishBase Fact Sheet
Author: Pam Fuller
Revision Date: 4/11/2006 Citation for this information:
Pam Fuller. 2009. Ameiurus catus. USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database, Gainesville, FL.
<http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/FactSheet.asp?speciesID=729> Revision Date: 4/11/2006
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