Bullhead Catfish: Black, Brown and Yellow Bullheads Compared

Bullhead catfish are the small, square-tailed catfish of ponds, creeks and quiet backwaters across the eastern two thirds of North America: the genus Ameiurus, three species that most anglers meet before they meet any other catfish and that many never learn to tell apart. Black, brown and yellow bullheads look alike, live in overlapping water, eat the same things and bite the same nightcrawler, and the differences that matter are on the chin and the pectoral spines rather than in the colour the names promise. Below: the identification marks from the state field guides, the water each species prefers, the sizes, ages and records, the method, and the two questions asked most: whether they sting and whether they are worth eating.

Black, brown and yellow bullheads are told apart on the chin barbels and the pectoral spines, not by the colour the names promise.

Identification

The tail settles the genus: a bullhead’s tail is squared or only slightly notched, where channel and blue catfish have deeply forked tails; the flathead has a square tail too but a projecting lower jaw and a flat head, and grows fifty times bigger. Within the genus, colour is the least reliable mark, because a black bullhead can be yellowish and a yellow bullhead can be dark. Missouri’s field guides use three marks instead.

Two cautions. The ray counts are where the field guides disagree: Missouri separates black (17–21) from brown (22–23), while the Florida Museum gives both as 19–23, so the counts reliably separate only the yellow bullhead from the other two; the barbel colour and the spine teeth do the rest. And the white catfish, Ameiurus catus, of the Atlantic and Gulf slopes is a bullhead by genus with a moderately forked tail and 22–25 rays, and is the one most often confused with a small channel catfish.

Where they live

The black bullhead’s native range runs through the Great Lakes, Hudson Bay and Mississippi basins from New York to Saskatchewan and Montana and south to the Gulf, and it has been introduced widely beyond that; it is the bullhead of prairie ponds and muddy, sluggish water, the species that survives where nothing else will. The brown bullhead is the eastern and northern fish, at home in clear, weedy lakes and ponds, and it is also the bullhead that was carried west and into Europe. The yellow bullhead sits between them, in the vegetated backwaters, overflow pools and clear ditches of the Midwest and South. All three tolerate low oxygen, warm water and silt that would kill a bass, which is why a farm pond that holds nothing else holds bullheads, and why an unmanaged pond ends up with thousands of stunted ones: bullheads overpopulate and stop growing when nothing eats them.

Season and behavior

Bullheads spawn in late spring, May and June in Missouri’s data, in a shallow nest or cavity that one or both parents guard; the young school in a dense black ball through their first summer, herded by the adults, a sight familiar to anyone who has looked into a pond in June. They feed at night and on the bottom: the young almost entirely on small crustaceans, the adults on immature aquatic insects, crayfish, snails, plant matter and the occasional small fish. The bite starts as the water warms in spring, peaks in early summer, and stays steady through the warm months on any evening; in winter they go quiet in the mud.

How to catch them

There is no simpler fishing. Bullheads are not selective, and the guides’ bait lists run from nightcrawlers, crickets and minnows to corn, cheese, hot dogs, liver and bread; the nightcrawler is the standard because it stays on the hook and smells right. The rig is a small bait hook, size 4 to 1/0, with a split shot or a light slip sinker to hold the bait on the bottom, on 6–10 lb line and any light rod; the hooks hub covers the sizes and the catfish hub the rigs. Fish from dusk into the night, in the shallows of ponds and creek pools and along weed edges; in small waters they bite by day too. Bullheads swallow bait, so a circle hook or a quick strike saves fish you intend to release. For a child with a bobber and a worm, a bullhead pond on a summer evening is the best first fishing there is.

Do bullheads sting?

Not with their whiskers. The three spines, one in the dorsal fin and one in each pectoral fin, lock upright when the fish is stressed, and on small catfish they are needle-sharp and carry a mild venom that causes swelling and a burning ache; bullheads are small catfish, so they are the ones that hurt people most. Hold a bullhead from above and behind with the hand slid up the body so the pectoral spines rest against the sides of your fingers and the web of the thumb sits behind the dorsal spine, or use a rag. A puncture is cleaned, and hot water eases the pain more than ice.

Are bullheads good to eat?

Yes, with a condition. The meat is firm and mild, and bullheads from clean, cool water are as good as any small catfish; from a warm, muddy, overcrowded pond they taste like the pond. Skin them, which is easier with pliers after a cut behind the head, and fry them whole or in fillets. State health advisories for mercury apply by waterbody as they do for every fish; bullheads are short-lived and small, which keeps them near the bottom of the list.

Size, records and regulations

Those are extraordinary fish; the everyday bullhead weighs under a pound. Most states set no limit or a generous one, and some class bullheads as rough fish; the state pages carry the current rules.

Related

The catfish hub covers the family, the baits and the rigs; the channel catfish page is the fish a big bullhead is mistaken for; the hooks hub has the small hooks a bullhead rig needs.