It's 2026: Why Do Trophy Catfish Paylakes Still Exist?

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Now, this is just sad for me to say. We are now yet again at the beginning of a trophy catfish pay season. It's 2026 and these pay lakes, they still exist.

[00:00:19]Now, I'm going to tell you what a trophy catfish pay is first real quick because I get a lot of new people watching my videos, and you need to know that this is actually happening now. Years ago, when I was a kid, there were paylakes. You could go to a pay lake. They would stalk trout or catfish and you would catch them and either take them home to eat or the pay lake would actually clean them and cook them for you and you know add the vegetables and whatever and you could have a nice familyfriendly dinner at the pay lake. There was no smells. It was just a good time. There was one, it was called the crosseyed cricket that I went to when I was a kid. And I tell you what, I got permission to use a rooster tail there. And literally every trout in their little pond would chase my rooster tail. I filled up a bunch of people's buckets that day for trout because the trout weren't eating the corn. Now, the crosseyed cricket did the right thing.

[00:01:31]they shut down and became an RV park.

[00:01:34]Now, I I think mostly was because they could not keep the channel catfish healthy because they would get channel catfish, farm-raised channel catfish, and they would get parasites, they would get, you know, various problems. So, they gave up on doing the pay thing, and now they're just an RV park.

[00:01:57]However, some pay lakes, especially up north in Ohio and Kentucky, realized that if you put one big fish in your pond, you attract more people to your pond, so you make more money. And that evolved into 1,500 to 3,000 pounds worth of catfish on almost a weekly basis. trophy size.

[00:02:25]I'm talking 20 pounds to 100 pounders put in their ponds on a weekly basis.

[00:02:33]And uh that's unsustainable. They, you know, it's been happening for 20 years or more.

[00:02:41]The Ohio River, the tournament directors noticed the fish quality went through the floor. They emptied out the Ohio River. And the easiest thing for the Kentucky and Ohio Pay Lakes was to go down Interstate 75 to the Tennessee River. They hit Fort Lden, they hit Watts Bar, and they continued south. And uh last year I got the unsettling report from several people that they are at Wheeler Lake, which should that should upset every tournament angler, any angller that wants to catch a big fish, that's should upset upset you. I mean, it's Wheeler. Wheeler is known to be a monster catfish lake and now they're getting hit. Thankfully, Alabama has been hitting back just as hard by giving out fines, catching these people. They even teamed up with Kentucky last year and Operation River Raid got a lot of people that had over the limit of catfish in Kentucky and some of them were also fined in Alabama. So, they got hit in two states, both Kentucky and Alabama. And that's because Kentucky has been creating new rules to fight against this problem.

[00:04:16]There's still trophy pays that exist in Kentucky that are pushing back and Ohio has just turned a blind eye to it. Now, a lot of people now there's a lot of shenanigans going on when it comes to these trophy catfish pays.

[00:04:36]And that's why I'm kind of doing this video just to talk about it more because there are more laws being, you know, Kentucky has another one, a no transport law that is that is trying to be passed.

[00:04:49]It's went through all the committees and now it just needs to be voted in by senators and then signed in by the governor or whatever, however the politics work. And I know there's a lot of people trying to stop it.

[00:05:06]The first major thing is that these Trophy Pay Lake Patreons and owners and the commercial people that are feeding them and people that feed them because I mean they they give you a lot of money for a big fish. I mean, it's it's it's real money that they're paying for these fish.

[00:05:29]They're trying to get you confused between trophy pay and pay lake. And they've successfully got one senator confused on this. I forgot his name already. He already said, "Oh, my grandfather's always gone to these pay lakes and there, you know, this is going to hurt them and blah blah blah." Well, um, it's not going to hurt a pay lake. If you are a family-friendly pay, you're going to be putting in farm-raised fish in your pond, not fish from the wild. And this is five pounders or less. You want to put 20 lb hybrids. A 20 lb hybrid takes like 10 years to grow.

[00:06:14]There's so many pays that they can't do that. and they might be able to order it one time in in five years or something, but these pays they they it's unsustainable to have big fish in there.

[00:06:27]You have to only do channel catfish. So, if they're trying to make you think that we're against these familyfriendly paylakes, I'm not against it. If the crosseyed cricket was still a paylake, I'd be fine with it. In fact, I'd probably be doing videos there. That would I know that would rile up a few people that are confused. You know, there's a lot of people out there confused between pay and trophy pay and that would rile up a bunch of people. I do wish they were still in business as a pay because I could go there and explain it even further that farmraised fish are fine. It's the ones that they're taking from the wild that's the problem. And that's these pay lakers are trying to get you to confuse the two. They, like I said, they've confused one senator already, which is going to hamper getting that bill passed of the no transport of trophyized fish. You know, get that passed.

[00:07:31]It needs support obviously.

[00:07:34]And uh I have to do a side note here.

[00:07:37]Some of these paylakers are have the are the most vile people that I've ever had to read comments from. I mean, it's borderline criminal. And when you're a senator, you kind of have a higher you're supposed to have a higher standard as a senator or whatever as a government official. I know there's a lot of corruption in the government. There's a lot of officials.

[00:08:08]You find out, you know, certain senators having an affair, he resigns. So, if you are supporting these vile people that are literally criminals that are even advocating criminal behavior, because a lot of them say, "Well, they grow faster in the South. The fines are worth it.

[00:08:28]We're going to continue doing that."

[00:08:31]There's a senator that is supporting that criminal behavior because it is a crime in the South to do what they're doing. So, they're supporting crime. Why would a senator risk their position to support these people? There are a few that are articulate with what they're saying and uh that's led to another lie with these trophy pays. They are trying to stop them by saying it's going to hurt the restaurant industry. And my question is, what restaurant is going to use fish from our polluted waterways when they can get farm-raised fish for cheaper? And when it's farm-raised fish, you know, obviously it's two, three, four pounders. It's small fish. The the no transport of live trophy fish will do absolutely nothing to the restaurant industry. But they wrote a long letter showing saying that it's going to hurt the restaurant industry and all this. I think I actually made a video against that too already.

[00:09:53]It's not going to hurt the restaurant industry. They get farm-raised fish. That's the easiest and cleanest way. I mean it it is there is an issue. You have the anti- antibiotics that they're using with pondra fish. So, what do you want to eat? Fish that have antibiotics to help prevent diseases or fish that are full of methyl mercury that will dull your mind or dull your kids' minds. I mean, I'd like to see us, you know, achieve warp drive someday.

[00:10:30]And uh if uh all of our kids have lead poisoning or you know have been eating stuff with methyl mercury in it, we're not going to see warp drive anytime soon. That's a bigger issue. I think farm-raised fish would be a little bit cleaner to eat. That's that's my opinion. So what they're saying about that is uh not true. It's another trickery.

[00:10:59]Ah, so here we are 2026 talking about trophy catfish pay lakes and the problems that they're creating. Now I do have an actual couple of antics here to show you. I've got them on here, but I'm going to put individual pictures like on the actual video.

[00:11:20]Um, actually this is just two different instances with three three different pictures. So let me do the first one here. Does that look like a healthy blue catfish? Does that look like a 105 pound blue catfish?

[00:11:39]I would say no on both accounts. I mean, it even had like a little tag on it. So, I'm thinking that this fish was 105 pounder and then they put it in their little bitty pond and now that's what it looks like. And I'm sure by now it's been wheelbarreled out of the pond. Now the next one is a fish that was uh it says the 100 pounder just hit the bank and congratulations or whatever. So they caught it in the picture that's next to it. That little bitty pond that is smaller than my neighbor's pond when I was a kid. in my neighbor's pond. I put a flathead about that big in it. And he kind of got mad at me because it ate every single fish in that pond. One little bitty flathead. So, we put 3,000 lbs worth of fish in a pond that's half an acre. Is that they're going to survive? No, they're not. It it's it's common sense to think that, you know, if if my little bitty baby flathead can wipe out all the food in a pond that is bigger than what that 100 pounder was put in.

[00:13:06]What are we doing putting 1500 to 3,000 lbs? Or what are they doing putting 1500 to 3,000 lb? They have to do it weekly obviously because they're wheelbarreling these fish out within a week, within a month. Sure, maybe that first 100 pounder that I showed you has been in there for a few months. It's possible.

[00:13:30]Is that a good thing? I mean, really, think about it. That's not a good thing.

[00:13:36]The aquarium in Chattanooga has trouble keeping blues in their aquarium. They have trouble. I talked to several of their biologists, even with that multi-million dollar filtration system. So, a mud puddle like what you just saw.

[00:13:56]Yeah. The the best thing these pays can do, these trophy pays can do is convert back to familyfriendly pays. Just put in catfish. Allow people to take them home.

[00:14:10]You want to make more money with your pay, cook the fish for your people.

[00:14:15]Become a restaurant. Restaurants have they make money. I I know. I've been in the restaurant industry. I have eyes into the restaurant industry. If you know what you're doing, you can make bank cooking and eating stuff. So, just become a pay lake restaurant if you want to make more money. But yeah, this it's another year and uh we're still talking about this stuff. There has been positive movement, but there's also been a lot of push back. And uh the push back that's recently happened, it's not, you know, it's not even good excuses.

[00:15:06]And so far, these not good excuses has turned one senator.

[00:15:15]I don't I don't know. I don't know what else to say. I'm in Tennessee. I can't control what happens in Kentucky. I can't control what happens in Ohio. All I can do is report on this insanity that continues to happen. I want to see a 200lb blue catfish sometime in my lifetime. And uh that's probably not going to happen because it takes 30, 40, 50 years for them to get that big. And if we continually take them out of the water like this, we're gonna it's going to be rare to see 50 pounders. It already is rare to see 50 pounders unless you go to grain elevators off of the Mississippi River, which they're heading that way. If you are in Louisiana and you know about the grain elevators and they're like, "Yeah, anytime. I could get an 80 pounder anytime." The pay lakes are coming for you. They're going to come for your fish eventually. They've made it to Wheeler. All they have to do is figure out the other interstates.

[00:16:22]Now, one last thing. I know there's a lot of people say, "Well, why don't they go to the Chesapeake Peak Bay?"

[00:16:29]Look on your maps and see what's between Ohio and Kentucky and the Chesapeake Bay.

[00:16:38]There's a mountain range there. And when you're towing 100 gallons or a thousand gallons, not 100, but like a thousand, some of these are going in 100 gallon tanks. But if you're towing thousands of gallons of water, you don't want to be going over mountains. And uh with the gas prices, it probably doesn't wouldn't even matter for them to do that, but it's the wear and tear on the vehicle. It's easier to go down I75 and break the rules and the laws down here in Tennessee and Alabama. It's going to be up to Kentucky and Ohio to solve this problem.

[00:17:20]And uh the best thing I can say is try to email these senators, email whoever in these states to get them to maybe do something. I I don't know. and sometimes emailing them probably won't do anything. So, but we do have people behind the scenes working on it.

[00:17:38]Hopefully someday this problem will be solved and I won't have to do any more videos like this. Now, as always, I want to thank you for taking your time out of your day to actually watch my video. I really, really appreciate it and just uh yeah, hopefully this will get solved someday and uh yeah, hopefully someday I'll catch a 100 pounder myself. Thanks again for watching. I do hope. See you next time.