The blue catfish is one of the biggest species of catfish in North America. It is bluish-gray in color with a white belly. They have a forked tail, very smooth skin with no scales, and a wide head.
As the common name suggests, this catfish has a flat head, but other than that, it looks like any other catfish: it has smooth, scaleless skin, and whisker-like barbels around the mouth.
The channel catfish is olive to light blue in color with black speckles on the sides, has a forked tail, whisker-like organs around the mouth, a broad flat head, and a slender body.
Black Bullheads (Ameiurus melas) are in the catfish family and can be distinguished from Channel Catfish by their squared tail fins. Channel Catfish have distinctly forked tails.
The Brown Bullhead can be identified by the presence of strong barbs or serrations on the back edge of its pectoral spines, and pigmentation in the chin barbels.
The Yellow Bullhead has white or yellow chin barbels throughout most of its range. The anal fin is long and fairly straight in outline, with 24-27 rays and the caudal fin edge is rounded.
White catfish look like bullheads with forked tails. Often confused with channel catfish because of the forked tail, the fin’s lobes are not as sharply pointed, nor does it grow as large.
