An Investigation Into Lewis & Clark's Claims of World-Record Catfish | With Spencer Neuharth 

Im betting on the 100 lb cat, they were coming out of the Stone Age, little to no fishing pressure, dead buffalo in the river. Yeah its possible. Lewis and Clark encountered a squirrel migration with millions of squirrels swimming across the river. Things were different, way different.

We need a Lewis and Clark series!

There is absolutely no way they would have caught a paddle fish and thought is was a catfish. The paddle fish is so unique they would have realized it wasn’t like anything they had seen before.

To be honest this episode was summed up very well in the last 4 minutes and didn’t need the rest… I think that Spencer just wanted to go paddle fishing and thought “how can I write this off as a work trip” haha

Blues and flatheads, native to the Missouri, regularly reach over 100 pounds so it doesn't seem remotely surprising to me or even something to be skeptical about back in that era? The misidentification seems unlikely as well since the explorers would have been very familiar with catfish from back east, though smaller versions. Unlike the western mammals which they had no corollary for in the eastern us. Anddd the biologist at the end just agreed with me lol. I think Spencer just wanted Meateater to pay for him to go fishing for paddlefish lol. That's good hustle.

Lewis and Clark were exploring 220ish years ago, before commercialization, over fishing, pollution, etc. Those fish had been unpressured for millions of years with only Native populations fishing them. We know for a fact that other species of wildlife have shrank over those 220 years from outside influences. I don't doubt for a second that back in 1803 there were far greater numbers of large fish in the MO river. Also who in their right mind would ever confuse a paddlefish for a damn catfish lmao, go on somewhere with that crap lol.

The untamed wilderness that the expedition got to be a part of would have been spectacular. Amazing how they kept such detailed records on top of everything else they were up against.

I’m not sure how this show happened? There’s no way the expedition would have made that mistake without documentation. Especially considering they had no idea paddles were there or how to target them if they wanted to.

This feels like a middle school science project where you realize your results aren’t what you thought they would be but you power through anyways because the sunk cost is too high. Seems pretty clear right off the bat that a catfish, pre-colonial settlement of the west, would get that big and not need to be a paddlefish.

Grandparents lived in Yankton, have fished both sides of the dam many times. Spencer, when you first mentioned working at the hatchery on the podcast, I was excited. I've been a visitor a dozen times in the past forty years. Fun stuff, thank you all!

Great work on this! Question though.. Why were you releasing the Silver Carp? Those are kill on sight in Missouri. I can't imagine other states want them released alive either.

Thank you for taking us on your adventure

The catfish that they zoomed in while speaking about blue catfish was a channel. A few minutes later, they zoomed in on a blue catfish. Paddlefish are filter feeders requiring them to be snagged and not caught. Most likely, Lewis & Clark crew was fishing with bait. The Missouri River was a different system prior to dams being built; a lot more nutrient inputs, habitats, and a more productive system. Catfish, in general, were not subjected to commercial harvest or anthropogenic impacts and were able to grow to larger lengths prior to the Missouri River having dams constructed. Anyways, I'm glad that Spencer's opinion was swayed, but with Specer having a fisheries background, I was surprised at his skepticism. L&C crew wasn't throwing out treble hooks and snagging fish they caught. Neat video, regardless!

As a historian myself, I feel like there is an avenue that went totally unexplored here: HOW the men on the Lewis and Clark expedition fished. While there may not be any details in the accounts themselves, contemporary records could suggest the likely methods, tackle and bait the men may have used, thereby shedding light on which fish they might have caught. I don't know if the reason for the snagging approach to paddlefish has more to do with it being a less physically harmful means of catching them or because getting them to attack bait is the challenge, but it strikes me that if such a method is how you catch one, that alone would rule heavily against paddlefish being the "catfish" in the historical account. Later documents about fish sizes, populations, and other factors prior to the development of the area would similarly reveal the probabilities. A fun episode to be sure, but if you wanted a show about catching paddlefish, I would have just led with that instead of trying to make a historical argument and then evaluate it by utterly ahistorical evidence and means. But I'll take my historian hat off and put my fishing hat on and say that they look like a hell of a lot of fun to catch regardless!

Let's go. This is gonna be super interesting. Meateater never disappoints. I will never stop fighting for Das Boat Canada/Ontario though

An almost untouched land at the time I would expect things to possibly be much bigger and more abundant.

A paddlefish is going to be too distinctive to confuse with a catfish. If they caught paddlefish the first descriptor would be the paddle. It's far more likely they caught big catfish and exaggerated the size.

Bass Lake in Johannesburg, right near the Vaal Dam Wall is well known for "Barbel" (An African species of Catfish) well over 100 Pounds...I did my dive qualifications there and saw at least 3 that were longer and heavier than me...so Catfish there back then when no people were around doesn`t seem all that impossible...

Great story! The Journals of Lewis and Clark are a must read. I have to say, Cats are more likely the fish they'd catch considering the way they fished would target Cats. You'd have to have previously learned knowledge in order to know how to fish for Paddles. Smoked Paddle-fish is phenomenal.

Great job, Spencer! The timing of this is great, for me . I'm right in the midst of reading about lewis and Clark , and mountain men in the years following

Keep up with the great content!

That's it!! All things MeatEater rock. Educational, fun.. Just all around 'genious'.

Paddlefish is an amazing fish to see in the water, & to eat. I have many fond memories of fishing/bowfishing in that same spillway & love bein out there at night as you see the paddlefish rolling at the surface. There have been times when it would give me chills. Nothing like a summer night on the Missouri.

I would love to see this episode in context of Lewis & Clark's expedition coming across Prairie Chicken!

I love this channel and support it completely and also support you questioning reports/history. My personal opinion is that there is no way they got a paddle fish and a catfish confused as the same species,for all the great things they found and accomplished I just don’t see them confusing a catfish with anything else.

At the time of Lewis and Clark's expedition they had Sycamore trees that were so big that 14 men could sit at a table inside the trunk and have lunch. Those trees no longer exist, but that doesn't mean they never did.

What journals did you comb through to get these entries. I’m planning a trip in reverse in a 1/2 scale homemade boat to match theirs. Would love to see some of the other journals out there

Spencer did a killer job with this episode! 10/10 would love to see him on here again.

This....this right here is why Meateater is on another level!!! Fantastic episode!!!

Great episode Spencer and crew!

I don't think there was any real doubt that the Lewis and Clark expedition confused catfish with paddlefish, but it's a great excuse to go fishing and film it.

We need a Steve and crew Lewis and Clark Expedition

Loved it! Well done!

History and fishing combined! Awesome.

A 100lb catfish is an absolute monster, but not a record breaker…a 130lb blue was caught out of the Missouri River in 2010 and I believe the world record is 144lbs ( not out of the Missouri). There’s no doubt in my mind that fish 100lbs plus not only existed but thrived in the Missouri River in the 1800s especially with the lack of dams and commercial fishing pressure. Did Lewis and Clark see 5 100lb blue cats? 🤷‍♂️ only god knows.

I just have to agree, the Paddle fish is such a unique looking species that Lewis and Clark would have noted it in their journal and not called them Catfish

Spencer was right up the road and didn't even stop in for a beer. Somebody's gone all Hollywood.. :D

Perhaps they were catching sturgeon? I don't think they commonly reach the 100lb mark in Montana/ND but maybe they used to? And old rancher in the Missouri breaks claimed they used to catch catfish so big they needed a tractor to tow them out. Probably BS but......maybe not.

I love this... although told many times. The tale of the extinction and rebirth of the whitetail would be good filmed and edited like this.

It is very hard to believe that if they had caught something as unusual, indeed bizarre, looking as a paddlefish they would not have remarked on it. Also, given that paddlefish are filter feeders, it seems unlikely they would have caught several of them fishing in a conventional manner. And, as others have remarked, the fauna of the great plains was extraordinarily different in the early 1800s.

This has my attention. What is next in this series?

I sometimes see old turn-of-the-century newspaper articles of the local deer harvest here in Vermont. While I can admire the mindset of the men who would venture out into the woods and the writers who would tell the tale, I often find the reported weight of the deer to be impossible to believe with numbers occasionally going north of 400lbs. I love a good hunting or fishing tale but any size or score of an animal before the advent of quality photography or use of a scale is hard to take with more than a grain of salt.

Reminds me of fishing with my dad he misidentifies half of the fish and argues with me on how he’s right.

Loved this!

There've been many world record blue cats caught that were over a hundred pounds, I know Keith day who caught the state record 110.3lb catfish in St. Francisville, La. back in 2010 out of the mississippi river. Today the record is held by some kid at like 141lbs and it was a catfish. There are tons of huge paddlefish out there, that can probably get just as big, but the world record paddlefish isn't the record catfish at the end of the day, even if they are called spoonbill catfish. If catfish are getting as big as they are now with as many fisherman hunting them today, I can only imagine how big they must have been when they faced their first real threats from humans back in the day, I Imagine it wasn't much different than the pictures I've seen of 10/12" long gar being hoisted out of the waters.

Great video!

In the time of Lewis & Clark there was no thought given to world record fish size. Fish were just seen as a food source so it is entirely possible that 5 or more 100 pound catfish were caught.

Dude you've got some interesting info. Keep this coming

When I was in welding school, my welding teacher swore he was telling the truth when he said this, (he was a straight shooter and a good guy) he knew an underwater welder that was doing work in the Mississippi river and said he saw 2 catfish that had heads wider than his shoulders and he wouldn't work without a partner after that on that particular job.

This is a great episode Spencer and crew! What an opportunity to travel back in time and get just a little glimpse of how it was. Catfish or Paddle fish? Either way I can feel the energy of their excitement.

Awesome video Spencer. Big fan

I didn't even know these fish existed in N.A till about a year ago. Been wanting to after them ever since. Got excited for this one. I did not know you target them via snag tho! Makes me think of Steve being apprehensive about poisoning fish in a puddle in the jungle.

Great video..ya mentioned a name Ordway..early on,I met an Ordway many years ago,the grandson..name Walter who’s story is very fascinating to learn about,which I had no idea at the time we hung out..

If it was misidentified, how about a sturgeon? They have similar skin, baubles, and they get absolutely enormous.

Nice documentary, lots of good stuff in there. I reckon they would have mentioned the giant snoz on the fish though if they had pulled in a 100 paddlefish

I imagine back in their day there was many 100 lbs catfish everwhere

I'm curious as to how they were fishing. Were they using nets, traps, hooknline etc?

Clay and Spencer have been killing it with the content!!! Keep it up.

My girlfriend loved your other Lewis and Clark video! We’ve been waiting for the next episode 👀👀

Great video

Wouldn’t a sturgeon make more sense than a paddle fish? They have small barbels and get huge.

I read a story printed in the late 1800's that claimed to use oxen to pull in catfish from limb lines, story was reprinted in the 90's Missouri conservation monthly magazine.

This seems like a significant stretch to even remotely think that they couldn't tell the difference between a catfish and a paddlefish.

could it have been a Sturgeon? I know they are in the Missouri River

I couldn't take this seriously once I realized what a paddle fish was..... no way I love this series and it was a super rad idea. I was pumped to watch it . Lol lots of love guys hahahahahaha

When I heard the theory, my initial thought was about the same as the final historian. The catfish was/is a common fish in American waters and both the blue and flathead get to that size range. The paddlefish wasn't an unknown, it's still a relatively common fish in the Ohio River basin. I couldn't think of a good reason to think that the description would be confused.

I feel like the dude who’s hosting this one is the only person who thinks they could have mistakenly called a Pattle fish a bluecat… like no one else does..

I have a photo of me when I was 13 holding up a 60 lbs flathead catfish and it was almost as tall as me. My dad caught it noodling and my job was to wade behind them holding the stringer with the fish

Good show

No one who has ever caught a catfish of any type would mistake a paddlefish for one. Just last year a record breaking blue, for this river, was caught in the Altamaha in GA, a much smaller river than the Missouri. Theres plenty of records of 100lb+ cats caught all over this country in its early history. Theres also records of those 100lb fish becoming more and more rare for generations. Catfish all along American rivers had their traditional breeding areas cutoff from them due to dams and other man made blockades. I saw a documentary where scientists say those fish are just now showing they have reestablished new breeding areas and more and more large cats are being caught every year. Now I have no idea if that documentary was true but it made sense when I watched it

Why release an invasive carp?

What sort of fishing gear/ tactics were they using during the expedition? Were they at all familiar with snagging such as what you were doing? Or was it a bait a hook and throw it into the river kinda thing? Knowing this would certainly help in solving the mystery...

First of all, the Missouri River in Missouri was 3x as wide as it was back then. It's 0.2 miles wide, back then it was 0.6 miles wide. Also the Missouri River was a wide but shallow river with insane current. Lewis and Clark then noted that there was islands flowing down the river. In the 1920s and 30s the Corps of Engineers dig out the Missouri River and made it more narrow for river travel. There is over 100 steamboats that sank between St. Louis and Kansas City. Reading about what the steamboat captains said about the Missouri River is also interesting. Now, Mark Twain wrote about a catfish that was caught (either on the Missouri or Mississippi River) that weighted 315lbs. Rumor has it that the reason why Kansas stopped noodling was because he tied a hay hook to his hand and went missing. Few days later he was found later (drowned) with a 200lbs still hooked on on the hay hook. Now there was a receipt from St. Louis from 1800s or maybe early 1900s for a catfish that weighted 150lbs. So 100lbs is good size but still small compared to history or their potential size.

I wanna see y'all cook that thing!!!

Not familiar with fish in the Missouri, are there sturgeon up there?

It really reads to me that the five largest catfish may have been 100 pounds together. It would certainly be more believable than five 100 pounders.

Aren't silver carp an invasive species and not supposed to be released back into the water?

There are paddle fish at a quarry in Tennessee. I can't wait to go scuba dive there.

Watching the live release of silver carp makes me cringe. They have severely hurt the native paddlefish populations in some parts of the southern US.

Back then it probably wasn't uncommon to see catfish that size. They would have mentioned the paddle because it's a huge difference in comparison.

I have personally picked up a paddle fish that someone else caught back in the 1970s in Missouri, I was 6'3" then, I'm 6'1" now, and the fish was longer than I was tall! Also back in the 1950s my dad use to hand-fish catfish and flathead, in Kansas, Saline River, that were as long as he was tall, and he was 5'9", they used to rub their bellies up to the bank then roll them onto the bank! 'KEEP ON KEEPIN ON'!

They were more outdoorsman than we could ever hope to be.

There are dozens of stories from divers here in SD that claim the same as Lewis & Clark. There are absolute monsters in the Missouri: cats, sturgeon, and paddlefish of proportions that would shock the average person.

This is...kind of ridiculous and a rewrite of history, kind of par for the course these days. Records didn't exist back then and meant nothing to anyone. C'mon. You really think these guys who grew up in "the east" didn't know what a catfish was when they had been catching or netting them since they were kids? Lewis and Clark weren't the only guys who talked about 5 to 6 foot long cats. You can find stories of them all over including in Mark Twain books. No dams, unspoiled wilderness, no predators of a fish that size. No pollution. Nothing to prevent a cat from reaching ridiculous size, age and weight. Guys are catching blues now well over 100 pounds since catch and release became a thing. 100 pounds shouldn't raise an eyebrow.

I got to say I am a bit perplexed that you thought they would not know the difference, nor comment on the paddle. Click bait?

From Louisiana here. My personal best is 93 lb bluecat

I’ve seen 3 catfish in the last 20 years that was over 100 pounds caught in the white river in Arkansas. Two flathead and one blue cat. They are out there just few and far in between.

The modern certified record catfish from the Missouri River is 106 lbs, so there's that...

It's a known fact that fish were bigger 200 years ago before the fishing pressure increased astronomically, in the 1900's.

World record for blues right now is 143 sooo not that unimaginable that they were catching blues

I just have a hard time believing they would confuse the two! One has whiskers! 🤷‍♂️✌️

I heard a story about dam maintenance scuba divers checking on the dam inlets underwater somewhere in Illinois. One diver reported a catfish whose eye was the size of a man, parked right in front of the inlet. He quit that day. I have no trouble believing Lewis & Clark pulled 100lb catfish out of a virgin river.

I think the Lewis and Clark would have said something about the big flat bill on the weird huge catfish. They probably did catch some giant cats. There wasn't any pressure on the fish back then

Not that I ever fished paddle fish, but for them to snag 9 paddle fish, makes more sense they were catfish. A 60 lb blue or flathead could be mistaken for 100 lb fish. Just makes more sense. Thanks for the video

"Investigation" more like an excuse to get a paddlefish tag haha

Why do you let the silver carp go? Are they not invasive ?

How much of that is nebraska?

You would have to have no idea what a catfish looked like to mistake a paddlefish for a catfish.

Rock boy just wanted an excuse to go snagging. I believe the fish they caught would have been catfish. Unlikely the Lewis and Clark party would have been snagging. And yea they probably exaggerated the weight some.

A good example of being blinded by ones own lifetime as an historical frame of reference.