Generally, catfish make excellent eating and will take a wide variety of baits and lures. However, catfish are bottom feeders and in water with heavy algae blooms can have an off flavor, but that is not common. Most anglers fish for them with worms, crickets, cheese balls or chicken necks, but they also strike artificial lures (see Tips). Cut baits using shiners or suckers also work well, and small dead minnows have been known to work also. The many restaurants that serve catfish show they are suitable for a variety of recipes. Small channel catfish, called spikes because they are about the size of a railroad spike, can even be fried whole and are delicious.

Channel catfish are not listed as game fish in the FWC regulations. So except in Fish Management Areas, there is no bag or size limit on them. This allows them to be harvested by commercial anglers using traps, trotlines and similar means, as well as by anglers. In Fish Management Areas, where
FWC biologists often stock and feed them, commercial harvest is not allowed, and the bag limit is six catfish.

The flathead catfish is another species, which has naturally expanded its range into panhandle Florida, and first appeared in the Apalachicola River in 1982. These fish previously provided a valuable commercial fishery in the Mississippi River system. Now they are spreading into other river systems and impacting native fisheries. Flathead catfish are voracious predators and can impact the population of native bullheads and redbreast sunfish. In the Apalachicola, biologists have determined that there has been an 85 percent decline in redbreast sunfish from pre-flatheads days until now. However, food samples from flathead stomachs in Florida, so far, have yielded mostly crayfish and Asiatic clams (another exotic), with less than 15 percent of the content being sunfish.

FWC staff have considered encouraging an intensive commercial fishery for flatheads, hoping that redbreasts and bullheads would recover. Unfortunately, this would not work for the following reasons:  

• Commercial methods would not take enough small flatheads to prevent rapid repopulation of the river.
• Additional flatheads would continue to enter from Georgia and Alabama.
• There are not enough flatheads to sustain a long-term fishery, and unlike channel catfish, small flatheads are not commercially valuable.

Florida anglers have broken the state record several times in the last few years. It is now 57.5 pounds. However, in their native range, flatheads go over 100 pounds. To qualify for a "Big Catch" angler recognition certificate you must catch a fish exceeding 36 inches or 25 pounds. Now that’s a trophy fishery worth trying out.