Angling in the Tennessee River near Chattanooga, an angler recently caught a PIEBALD blue catfish with strikingly unusual coloration. On August 19, Daimon Drymon, a kayak fisherman from Redbank, Tennessee, caught a piebald blue catfish near the Tennessee River. It’s just a few miles downstream from Chattanooga.
As Drymon drifted along the river, he hooked up with a 7-inch circle hook baited with chicken liver. He took his time playing the fish with a medium heavy rod spooled with 17-pound monofilament line. He got his first glimpse of the fish after about a 10-minute fight.
“When it came up and I actually seen (sic) the color configuration of it, I was really amazed and amused by it,” Drymon tells F&S. “I was like pretty much like, ‘Oh my God. I just caught a cow catfish.’”
A blue catfish was mostly white, with flecks of dark gray scattered across its back and pink on its fins and barbels. Blue cats do not have pink eyes as albino fish usually do. It is believed that piebald fish—as well as horses, dogs, birds, and cows—are all affected by leucism, a condition caused by defects in pigment cells in skin, hair, or feathers, resulting in all white animals or patches of white mixed with normal coloration.
It’s no secret that the Tennessee River is a hotspot for strange catfish catches
Recently, the Tennessee River – which begins in Knoxville before making its way through Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky to eventually empty into the Ohio River at Paducah – has seen some uncommonly colored blue catfish caught in the Chattanooga area. Farrah Reidt experienced a surprise when a 33-inch albino blue catfish took her bait while night-fishing near downtown Chattanooga in April 2021. The next oddity came in June when 15-year-old Edwards Tarumianz hauled in an all-white blue cat off a charter boat fishing trip. His fish had pink fins but lacked pink eyes, indicating it was likely leucistic. Then again in September 2021, another angler encountered a leucistic blue catfish from the tailwaters of Chickamauga Dam along the river.
Sources: Fielandstream
