It’s the hook-and-line sportfishing for catfish that’s the driving force behind better management of the species. But the guys doing that management have the most to learn from the grabblers about fish behavior and the most to benefit from what those hand-grabbers can provide.

“One of the things we’re trying to develop with the grabblers is the capture of eggs spawned in their houses,” said Ron Garavelli, chief of fisheries for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. “They have access to wild-spawned roe that can be removed from the box and brought to our new hatchery at Enid so we can hatch them for release and restocking. I think there is an advantage to taking roe from that situation rather than from having to remove them from broodstock at the hatchery.

“And restocking those fish is a priority. A lot of our coastal and Delta rivers and oxbows lost a lot of their native populations in 2005 due to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Katrina destroyed a lot of the coast resource and then when the remains of Rita passed over the Delta and dumped dozens of inches of rain, our lakes and streams turned over and we lost a lot of fish.”

Rivers -- the Mississippi, the Pascagoula, the Tenneessee-Tombigbee Waterway an others -- are the best blue and flathead catfish fisheries in the state. One of the most underrated is the Pearl below its dam at Barnett Reservoir.

“It’s because of the reservoir and the dam that the fishing has gotten good on the Pearl again,” said Earl Allen of Rockport, who has fished the Pearl for more than 50 years. “Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, it had gotten to the point that you couldn’t find a big tabby or blue anywhere in the Pearl. It had been fished out by telephoners” -- a reference to the use decades ago of old hand-cranked telephone boxes to shock fish. “They had wiped out the big catfish.

“Then they opened Barnett and built that dam -- and I’m not sure why it turned the river around. But in less than five years by the ‘70s the river had gotten better. I don’t know if it’s because the fish they stocked in the reservoir escaped, or if it just gave fishermen another place to go and they quit fishing the river. All I can tell you is that now, this is about as good a catfishing hole as we have anywhere in the state or the country.”

Allen, a trotliner and a retired commercial fisherman, has also trained a lot of hook-and-line fishermen to find the big fish. So what’s his No. 1 tip for catching a behemoth?

“Fish deep holes,” he stated. “That’s where the big mamas live. You can catch more fish shallow in current and around logjams, but if you want to get a big one -- and I mean, we got some giants down here that you can’t turn with a rod and reel -- you better fish deep.”

His No. 2 tip has to do with bait. “If you want a tabby cat, then you need to be using live bait. I like small pond bream or big minnows, but the best is a little mud cat” -- a common name for several species of bullheads. “They can’t stand them mud cats -- a big tabby has to eat it.

“We catch a lot of big blues on live bait, too, but they eat anything. They’re more like a channel cat, in that they are opportunistic and eat whatever they find.”