Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Caught some chanell cats with black splotches??

We have been catching chanell cats with black spots or better discribed as splotches as they are not round and no pattern to them. I have been fishing this same lake for 60 years and this is the first time I have seen anything like it. Smaller fish don't have the black on them. It seems 6 pound is about the dividing line. Everything under six pound, no spots. Over six pound have spots. We caught five fish five pound or smaller, Sunday. We put back eight fish with spots, up to 15 pound. Any ideas. Kenny West central Ohio.

Splotches

External?

Internal?

Tel us a little more what they look like and where they are.

Louis,
We didn't eat any of them so inside, I don't know. There is no pattern to the spots. Most of them are less than the size of a quarter. One we caught would have been coal black on maybe 30 percent of its body. Most of them would have been black on maybe 5 percent or less of the body. My wife took a picture with her phone but we don't know how to get it off the phone. Kenny