FISHY BUSINESS ON THE VERDE

There's catfish in the Verde. Ray Adams and two sons show the catch after a day's fishing. Folks around the Verde call them Channel Catfish. There are several species in the Verde, including the true Channel Cat and the Mississippi Cat. Channel cat were stocked seventeen years ago.

Story by Earl Jackson

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROY J. MANLEY

PAGE TEN OF ARIZONA HIGHWAYS FOR SEPTEMBER, 1946 We had been fishing most of the morning since six o'clock, my wife and I, and not a nibble had we received. Our old friend the Verde River, fat and boisterous with April waters from the melting snow of the Mogollon Rim, was obviously not feeling generous today. I sat half-chilled in the frequent icy breezes, perched like a vulture on a huge boulder at the water's edge, letting the current tug my bait slowly over sand bars 15 feet below.

Betty, standing on the grassy bank a short distance upstream, made one more wearied cast with her weighted shrimp into the middle of the river, to let it drag along on the bottom toward an attractive eddy under the upstream side of my rocky perch. At least, if I were a catfish, I know I would have liked that eddy.

"Oh, the devil!" she cried in disgust, "I'm snagged again." She started playing the line to loosen it, giving slack and flipping it, but all the slack she gave was firmly taken up. Suddenly she jerked the tip of her casting rod again, and this set off her "snag," which started down river like a steamboat.

"I've got a fish!" she shouted, "and it must be the granddaddy of them all!"

She played the fish for all she was worth, while I stood up on my rock and excitedly gave instructions on how to land it.

"Hold that line, hold that line!" I hollered, reverting to bleacher vernacular. "Don't let him get all your line out he'll snap it off! Play him, play him, pull him up a little, slow him down. Look out or you'll pull the hook out of his mouth! For the love of mike don't . . .line. At last the greenish black flanks of her quarry broke water near enough to the bank for me to reach a hand into his gill and pull the whiskery fellow into the light of day.

Betty sagged wearily while I arranged our fine fat friend for a picture. This specimen consisted of 27 inches of extremely fat and vigorous Channel catfish, which weighed 71% pounds dressed. While by no means a record, it was the largest fresh water fish either of us had ever caught, and was large enough to command the interest of any Arizona angler.

The Verde River, which cuts through canyons entering and leaving the Verde Valley, in Central Arizona, hasn't always been a fisherman's joy. Originally, like many other warm water western streams, its waters were occupied only by members of the Minnow and Sucker families, although one of its minnows, the Verde "Trout" or Boney-tail, reaches a length of 18 or 20 inches. This river also is marked by the German Carp fiasco of the 1870's, for these fish found their way here many years ago and have thrived.

Fortunately, some of the other fish species which were early introduced into the Verde were much more desirable, such as the Green Sunfish and the Bullhead, or Horned Pout (Ameiurus nebulosus). The sunfish have made themselves at home mostly in the creek tributaries, but the Bullhead is found throughout the warmer waters of this drainage system. Bass are of later date, and grow here to large size.

It was about 17 years ago that Channel catfish were first tried in the Verde. Approximately 20 mature fish, ready to spawn, were brought over from the Colorado River and released, and for several years nothing else was done. Once in a while some angler would come in with a big cat, but these occasions were rare, for you can see it would have taken quite a spell for 20 fish to stock over 100 miles of river.

Local sportsmen were very anxious to get the Verde really stocked with Channel cat, and the way they used their ingenuity to take advantage of opportunity when it came shows a community spirit of which any district could justly be proud. The chance came with the completion of Parker Dam, on the Colorado River at Parker, Arizona. The great diversion tunnels that had been used for bypassing the river waters during dam construction were closed off, and as the water receded an incredible number of small Channels were trapped.

The Arizona Game and Fish Commission notified various game protective associations in the state of the fish available for stocking, stating it was financially unable to move the fish, but would furnish men and seines to load them, provided transportation was furnished. All expenses had to be borne by those obtaining the cats.

The Camp Verde Game Protection Association and similar groups in nearby Clarkdale and Cottonwood immediately got busy by popular subscription to finance a project. Trucks were donated for hauling, and every barrel and oil drum that would hold water was begged and borrowed. Crews were organized to handle the fish when they arrived, usually around midnight. And by such initiative Channel catfish came over the 200 mile route from Parker to the Verde River, not by 20's, but by the thousand.

Today the Verde is abundantly stocked with these delicious fish, all of which are called Channel Cats by the local people. Actually there are two species, regarded by the Fist and Game Commission as the true Channel (Ictalurus punctatus), also called Fiddler, White Cat, or Silver Cat, and the Mississippi Catfish (Ictalurus furcatus), known also as Great Fork-tailed Cat, Blue Cat, Chuckle-headed Cat.

The true Channel Cat in the Verde is long and slender of body, quite light in ground color, dark-spotted along the sides, and does not often exceed 18 inches in length in these waters. The Mississippi Cat here grows to a little over 30 inches in length, has a very large head, and is quite pot-bellied and heavy. They haven't been in the Verde long enough in numbers for us to know just how big they will grow, but probably they won't exceed 15 or 20 pounds. This contrasts with weights up to 150 pounds in the Mississippi.

The avid fisherman can try his luck in almost any type of water in the Verde. There are numberless long and tranquil pools, plenty of long ripples with deep swirls and eddies at the bottom, and about 12 miles below Camp Verde you can find cataracts and white water.

The Channel Cat, or Punctatus for convenience, is partial to fairly fast currents. I have pulled him out of swirls just below white water, in the middle of a long series of ripples, and from comparatively tranquil eddies below. This does not mean that he is consistently high-hat toward tranquil pools, though. I have snagged a number of them in the Diamond S hole below Camp Verde where the moving current was almost dead. But generally speaking, Punctatus likes faster water, and with that lean, sinewy figure he is well qualified to handle it, and to put up a real scrap when caught.

The flow of the Verde is variable depending on the season. When the river is in flood stage, the runoff is terrific. Ordinarily the Verde has a very placid life. The experts say that the time to do your fishing in the Verde is in late spring or early summer for springs floods will have receded and the water will be a bit roiled. Fishing is good in autumn after the hot days of summer have passed.