Posted over in Sunfishes about I guy I bumped into online who works for a hatchery. I told him about NANFA and he said this may be of interest to some of you. Its a true Channel Cat, but a marbled color morph.

Is the hatchery producing these as a "strain" or is this just an occasional mutation that pops up?

I can imagine the koi pond marketers pushing these as koi-cats or something.

Tell him to make some more!

Is the hatchery producing these as a "strain" or is this just an occasional mutation that pops up?

I can imagine the koi pond marketers pushing these as koi-cats or something.

I encountered one in the wild a few years ago while I was doing creel sampling on Brice's Creek (Trent river, Croatan National Forest). I wonder if it is just an occasional mutation? 

Just got a response from him:

The "marbled" catfish in the photo and some others similar are part of the hatchery brood stock. He was spawned last year with three "marbled" females, and some of their offspring will be kept for broodstock.  

The male in my cover photo and the female in this photo I called "super marbles" because they had more pattern than most of the other "marbles" I have seen. I have seen about 30 out of 20 million I have raised. The frequency increased after I spawned one with some normal about seven years ago. (so some of the heterozygous offspring must have been used as broodstock) This year I spawned the two "super marbles" and got about 10,000 sac fry. About one quarter were pales, and died before swim-up. They must have had a lethal recessive gene combination. I have never seen that. I kept 23 of the offspring. none look marbled yet, but about 1/4 of the spawn (counting the quarter that died) are a mottle dark color, nearly black.

WOW! Establishing a line that breeds true would open up the possibility of catfish as variable as Koi! Love to have a few fingerlings.. I have caught gold channel cats.. 

He posted some other pictures of weird channels he bred. One type he called ghost channels, which looked like normal ones but were really dark, another he called bandit channels, which looked like they were wearing a mask, and he also had a golden strain of flathead catfish which were pretty awesome looking.

He posted some other pictures of weird channels he bred. One type he called ghost channels, which looked like normal ones but were really dark, another he called bandit channels, which looked like they were wearing a mask, and he also had a golden strain of flathead catfish which were pretty awesome looking.

Is there any way these will become available at some point!? 

I dunno, he said he's retired so maybe not. He worked at a hatchery not a tropical fish farm, so I'm not sure how much of what he was doing involves the aquarium trade. More for pond stocking, methinks.

Oh well opportunities missed I guess!