Des Moines radio station KXNO's Sports Fanatics show recently aired its May fishing report, and called upon Mark Pegg to offer some insight into a particular target for anglers, the humongous Red River catfish. Pegg, a fisheries ecologist with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Natural Resources, had plenty to share.
Pegg recapped a major study in which he and a team of researchers tagged and tracked the movements of nearly 16,000 channel catfish. Many of the fish navigated about 450 miles of waterways, from around the St. Andrews Lock and Dam in Manitoba, Canada, to Fargo, North Dakota, and all points in between.
"The movement side of things really kind of astonished me," Pegg told hosts Ross Peterson and Chris Williams. "We knew they would move some, but we didn't expect them to go as far as they did."
Pegg also talks about a current telemetry study using transmitters to track 162 catfish, including one that swam about 1,200 miles in the course of a summer. Pegg said that the tags were applied to the catfish in the studies after researchers hooked the fish, and the hosts asked Pegg what kind of setup they used to get such a haul.
"That's an angler secret, isn't it?" Pegg replied.
Listen to the full interview on KXNO.
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