Originally Posted by
etucker1959
Did someone say controversial???? I'm your man!!!!! lol I came up with a theory 5 years ago, that so far has not been proven wrong. The theory goes like this, because a Blue Catfish only lives to be 20-25 years old if you don't keep planting them all your monster catfish will die off do to old age. I believe Irvine lake had a gap where they didn't plant them. So all those 60-89 lbers people caught for years eventually died off!!!! They were then replaced with a bunch of 10-20 lbers a number of years ago. You can then graph the growth rate of those fish every year. Last year the biggest fish caught I believe was a 54 pounder, the year before that was say a 50, the year before that was a 46, the year before that was a 42 etc. So far no fish as buck the line in the last 10 years. I also believe they will start to grow even faster the bigger they get. So if my theory is still correct, a 60 or so pounder is the biggest fish that should be caught this year. If someone catches a 70 plus pounder my theory is all wet!!!!! lol Let's see what happens this year!!!! My guess is that 75 pounder is safe for a couple more years at least!!!!