Cave of the Giant Catfish

In the early 1980s, world renowned film maker and photographer Wes Skiles and his buddy Lamar Hires began investigating a spring on the west bank of the Chipola River not far from the small town of Altha in the Panhandle. During their explorations, a doctor in the region began claiming that a company was dumping toxic wastes into the Chipola. The doctor also alleged that this company had hired some hit men to hush his criticism. He later accused them of stabbing him. Police working the case, however, soon learned that he had wounded himself. Apparently the doctor used a local anesthetic and made sure the punctures missed his vital organs and major arteries. He apparently faked this attack to gain national attention. After the incident, Skiles began calling the site Mad Doctors. As he and Hires continued to probe the submerged grotto, the chalky nature of the limestone somehow evolved into the name of Mad Doc Chalk, which eventually became Maddachalk.

At any rate, the explorers discovered this cave went back some 1,500 ft. with a maximum depth of about 40 feet. Skiles described the colorful sediments on the delicate cave's floor. He also spoke of seeing an attractive gray catfish, which he described as one of the largest he had ever come across. A Florida native with thousands of dives to his credit, Wes' observations later proved to be on target.

In 1993, a diving buddy asked me if I wanted to check out this spring. Steve had been going there since 1989. He described the small cave as very beautiful and as a lair for some "giant" catfish. We arrived there on a warm July afternoon and put on our gear. It felt good to get in the water and cool off, but I remained skeptical of seeing any finned Goliaths. To my surprise, though, as we rounded the first bend in the passage, some huge catfish sped away from us. I couldn't get a good look at them since they didn't seem to be in the mood for posing. I knew, however, that they dwarfed the small bullheads commonly seen in many Florida springs and sinks.

About a year later, Mike Spelman, a trained cave diver who also works as a fisheries technician for the Florida Game & Fish Commission, authenticated their presence in Maddachalk by photographing and filming these freshwater leviathans. He identified them as flathead (Pylodicitis olivaris) catfish. He speculated they had entered the Chipola from the Apalachicola River with the removal of the Dead Lakes Dam in 1990. The fish had been in the Apalachicola since the early 1980s but their numbers had exploded by 1985. In the mid 1950s flatheads had been deliberately placed in upper portions of Georgia's Flint River, one of the main tributaries of the Apalachicola. Dan Dobbins, a fisheries biologist with the Game & Fish Commission, says they have since appeared in Florida's Escambia, Perdido and Ochlockonee rivers. Native to the large sluggish river basins such as the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri, the fish now occur from South Dakota to western Pennsylvania and down to the Gulf of Mexico.

Also known as mud catfish, goujon, shovelhead, johnnie cat and yellow cats, the flatheads constitute one of the three largest (the other two being blue and channel) catfish in the U.S. They are, however, markedly different in appearance from blue and channel cats. Some experts feel they shouldn't even be classified as catfish. They get their name from their long, flat faces. The lower jaw projects beyond the upper jaw on their bulbous heads. Unlike blue and channel cats, the tips of their tail fins are squared rather than forked. Olive to yellowish brown in color with some mottling on their sides, one pundit compared their skins to that of garden slugs. Another person described them as so ugly even a mother catfish wouldn't claim one. Writer Ben Baker calls them big, ugly, mean and having a nasty habit of wrecking expensive tackle. Yet another wag says that looking at them head-on, they appear as though they've been pulled through an old-style washing machine and run through a trash compactor.

While they'll never become a poster species, their size alone is impressive. Flatheads displayed at a state fair in Iowa weighed in at 60 lbs. Catches average two to five pounds, although 20-40 lb. specimens are not uncommon. The fish can weigh more than 100 lbs. and reach lengths of 5.5 feet. They often live to be at least 20 years old, although the true giants among them live as long as 50 years. According to Jeff Nordhaus, a fisheries biologist with the Florida Game & Fish Commission, it takes only eight or nine years for flatheads in the Apalachicola to reach weights between 30 and 40 pounds.

They prefer deep holes scoured by currents such as in eddies, next to bridge pilings and below dam spillways. This aggressive predator is much more piscivorous (feeding on other fish) than most catfish. Adults eat gizzard shad, carp, channel catfish, bullheads, bream and occasionally crayfish. Juveniles rely more on insects and crayfish than adults. Rarely caught using stink baits or malodorous allurements that normally attract other species of catfish, flatheads scavenge very little. Three flathead stomachs were recently sampled by Florida Game & Fish biologists. They contained a 15 inch mullet, a seven inch shellcracker and a dozen channel catfish, respectively. On one occasion, biologists loaded some bullheads and flatheads into the same transport tank. When they reached their destination, no bullheads could be found. In the Apalachicola River, most of their diet consists of redbreast bream, a fact not lost on panfish aficionados who harbor no love for these intruders from the north.

They are primarily dormant during the summer and winter. In fact, one study of them in the Mississippi River revealed that some had lain in one spot for so long that river silt had accumulated on their backs. Fisheries biologist Nordhaus recently told me they can't even shock them up once water temperatures fall to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. They make up for these long fasts during spring and fall.

Commercial and recreational fishermen have begun seeking them as quarry. The former use baited traps, trotlines, hoop, gill and trammel nets. Recreational anglers catch them on the bottom using heavy tackle (stout rods or poles, 30 to 50 pound-test lines and large hooks). They ordinarily use live or freshly cut fish as bait. Again, foul smelling offerings do not appeal to them. One individual likened catching a flathead to tying into a blue marlin in the Gulf. Flatheads mostly feed at the surface or in shallow water at night or during the twilight hours. Some tend to hide in hollow logs where they sometimes become permanently lodged, unable to either swim through or back out.

Maybe not the most intelligent of fish, Tennessee fishermen Bill Ellis opines, "there is no fish in the world that can beat them in the skillet." They can be cooked just about any way you like. Another gourmet suggests that, "flatheads are different from other catfish. They get better as they get older and bigger." This make sense based on their high protein diet. It surely wouldn't take many of them to make up a meal.

Whatever the case, Mike Spelman and I returned to Maddachalk in the fall of 1995 with the intention of capturing these rogues on film. The land surrounding this air-clear spring had been fenced and gated since my last visit. The property owner had grown tired of people using his acreage as a garbage dump. We unlocked the gate and went on to the dive site. Both of us were laden with cave diving gear as well as underwater cameras and strobes. Neither of us knew whether these fish would stay still long enough to get good shots of them.

We swam into the spring entrance in the bottom of the river. It felt good to get into the cave, since the stream water was much colder than that issuing from the spring vent. When we rounded the first turn in the tunnel, we saw some monster catfish, a largemouthed bass and big turtle. Unfortunately, the catfish and turtle seemed upset by our appearance. Nonetheless, we struggled against the strong current into the cave. We eventually spotted a large gray catfish that weighed about 15 pounds. This fished practically modeled for us as we blinded him with our bright strobes. Mistaking this fine specimen, with its normal catfish head and deeply forked tail fin, for a flathead, though, would have been akin to confusing Cindy Crawford with Roseanne. Mike and I surmised that this channel catfish must have been similar to the one Wes Skiles had seen here in the early 80s, since flatheads most likely didn't enter the Chipola until a decade after the dive team had completed their explorations.

At any rate, we turned around and swam back toward the cave entrance. Suddenly, Spelman's eagle-eye spotted a big flathead peering out from under a crevice. We chased the big fish a minute or two. I was firing away with my camera, trying to get Mike and the catfish in the same frame. The only way to convey the size of these monsters is to put something or somebody beside them. Meanwhile, Mike had cornered one in a hollow. At first, the behemoth was uncooperative. Eventually, though, he stuck his head out from his rocky hideout and we began photographing the fish. For all we knew, he may have wondered why a couple of finned lightning bugs, bubbling after every breath, were dogging him. After about an hour in the dark reaches, we broke the sun-drenched surface of the Chipola--elated about our encounters with giant catfish.

Flatheads now join a long list of exotic life forms that call Florida home. Unlike most other exotics, though, at least these fish are good to eat and give freshwater fishermen in the state a formidable new challenge. On the other hand, their documented preference for redbreasts bodes ill for those who like filling their frying pans with river bream. During our dives at Maddachalk, we also have noted a total lack of bullheads and blind cave crayfish--native species usually found in ecologically healthy caves. Could the flatheads be responsible for their absence? Despite what we think about them, the flatheads are now permanent fixtures in the "Cave of the Giant Catfish."