The reason? Catfish are cavity spawners, finding natural holes in riprap, rocky banks, or along clay banks. "If those are high and dry and reproduction is reduced to some smaller percentage of normal, we don't see the results for two or three years," Gilliland said. "It takes that long for a channel cat to get up to 14 inches. The same sort of thing applies to blues and flatheads, too, since they are all a cavity nest spawning species."

Since water conditions have been at least fair in portions of the state -- especially in northeastern Oklahoma -- Gilliland is giving thumbs up for whiskerfish prospects this year.

"As far as catfishing goes, with the exception of some of our western lakes like Salt Plains, I don't know that we'll see much difference this year," he said. "Things should continue on pretty much as they have been."

Take Lake Texoma, for instance, home to perhaps the state's most famous catfish fishery.

Such a reputation is due, of course, to the gigantic blue cats roaming the depths of the massive reservoir, none of those beasts being more famous than the late, great former world-record "Splash," the 121.5-pound blue caught by Texas angler Cody Mullenix in January 2004.

While Splash is gone now -- she died in December 2005 while on display in an aquarium at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center -- her progeny live on in the waters of 89,000-acre Lake Texoma.

"Texoma has the potential for world-record-sized fish in there," Gilliland said. "That's obviously true since we've had a world-record fish come out of there."

When coupled with a number of other big blues -- most notably, B.J. Nabor's November 2004 Oklahoma state-record blue cat weighing 98 pounds -- Texoma in some ways may have helped give birth to the genesis of a new wave of whiskerfish angling popularity in Oklahoma.

"We have been reading and hearing for the last year or two on blue catfishing that the fish seem to be gaining quite a good following," Gilliland said. "We have a number of lakes in Oklahoma that have blues, both in terms of size and quantity."

Behind Texoma, the ODWC biologist ranks the state's strong blue cat fisheries as Grand Lake near Grove; Keystone Lake west of Tulsa; Oologah Lake northeast of Tulsa; and the lakes of the Arkansas River system including Kaw Lake near Ponca City, Webber Falls Reservoir near Muskogee, and Robert S. Kerr Lake near Sallisaw.

One reason for the abundant blue cat populations in each of these water bodies is that the species is prolific.

"In terms of blue catfish, when we're trying to get them to exist in a lake where they haven't before, we have gone to stocking adults and we let nature take care of it," Gilliland said. "They seem to do fairly well."

Another reason blue cats do well in Oklahoma waters is that the species is able to make use of more open water habitat that comes as reservoirs age.

"While channels and flatheads are bottom-dwellers, blues will often suspend in the middle of the water column," Gilliland said. "In the summertime, they may be in 30, 40, or 50 feet of water 20 feet down. Anglers that use electronics can find these schools in open water and can catch them, typically drifting cut bait at the right depth."

Or even while using a Clouser minnow with an 8-weight fly rod in hand.