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Other freshwater · Freshwater

Black bullhead

Ameiurus melas

Native central North American bullhead with broad introductions; especially tolerant of warm, turbid, low-gradient water.

Also called polliwog, chucklehead cat.

  • Stillwater
  • Flowing water
  • Ordinary target
  • 4 of 4 overlays reviewed
  • Reviewed 2026-08-27
10 things this record does not know
Black bullhead (Ameiurus melas). Photograph published by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Photograph · reviewed 2026-10-25

USFWS photograph of a live fish on white. Dark chin barbels, a squarish, barely notched tail with a pale bar across its base, and dark fin membranes are visible. Dark chin barbels separate it from yellow bullhead (white chin barbels); brown bullhead is mottled and has strongly barbed pectoral spines, checked in hand.

Sam Stukel / USFWS · U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service · Public Domain — U.S. federal government work · Identified by the publishing body Source

Body form
Stocky bullhead with a slightly notched tail; TPWD notes Ameiurus refers to that slight caudal notch.
Habitat
Bottom-oriented, often shallow at night and deeper or tighter to cover in bright conditions.
Prey
Highly tolerant benthic omnivore of turbid, soft-bottomed water. Diet overlaps brown bullhead; habitat tolerance is the distinction, not a unique prey list.

Handling · field practice, not a product

How to hold this fish, and what the record actually says

Field practice

The four steps are field practice for every fish. Species-specific handling is listed only when the reviewed record has it. Nothing here is a harvest instruction or a legal opinion.

  1. 01 · Wet hands

    Keep the slime on the fish. Dry hands and dry cloth scrape it off.

  2. 02 · Support the body

    Hold it horizontal. Do not hang it from the jaw in air.

  3. 03 · Minimize air

    Photograph fast. Return faster. The clock starts when it leaves the water.

  4. 04 · Clean, drain, dry

    Before the next water. Invasives travel in live wells, bilges and felt soles.

Take this somewhere

This page is the record. The reading is what happens when you add water, a season and a temperature to it — that is where the families below get ranked against each other instead of just listed.

Start a readingRead Black bullhead on your waterOpens the analyst with this fish already picked.Forage & hatchHatch MatchWhat this fish is likely eating on that kind of water, at that time of year.TackleTackle Link AnalystWhether the line and terminal end you already own can deliver these families.WaterField Sense NavigatorWhere water like this exists, and what it is doing right now.

Those three links carry the fish and nothing else. No conditions were declared on this page, so none travel, and the link says so rather than sending an empty reading.

The half nobody publishes

What this record does not know

Everything else on this page comes from a named agency or peer-reviewed source. This is the other side of that: the questions a reviewer went looking for an answer to and came back without, and the fields the record leaves empty because filling them would mean guessing.

It is here rather than at the bottom because a page that only shows what it knows is easy to read as a page that knows everything. For Black bullhead there are 10 of them.

Named by a reviewer

8

Somebody looked for this and wrote down that they did not find it.

Behaviour

Nobody has sourced:

  • species-specific angling-pressure response beyond general cover/light notes
  • cold-front / barometric response with primary-source support
Identification

Nobody has sourced:

  • anal-ray count as a structured primary-source field
  • longevity as a structured field
Forage

Nobody has sourced:

  • finer month-by-month diet inside a season, which is waterbody-specific
  • quantified diet overlap with brown bullhead
Season

Nobody has sourced:

  • month-by-month location changes inside a season, which are waterbody-specific
  • population-archetype calendars beyond the species-level overlay (see RPC)

Absent from the record

2

No reviewer wrote a gap here. The field is simply empty, which is its own answer.

Water temperature

These figures mix measured preference and catch-distribution evidence. The edges are softer than the core.

Population context

No regional population profile is registered. The species-level reading stands on its own; it does not silently become a local one.

Where the record puts it

Water and range

Warm ponds, lakes, reservoirs, backwaters, and sluggish rivers across the central continent and introduced ranges.

Stillwater

5 reviewed holding classes
  • Basin
  • Wood
  • Weed edge
  • Shallow flat
  • Inlet

Flowing water

4 reviewed holding classes
  • Eddy
  • Deep pool
  • Side channel
  • Submerged wood

DepthBottom-oriented, often shallow at night and deeper or tighter to cover in bright conditions.

Moving waterStrong fit is slow, turbid, soft-bottomed water with little current; highly tolerant of conditions that exclude many sight-oriented fishes.

LightLow-light and nocturnal feeding is common; olfaction reduces dependence on visibility.

Thermal band

Temperature

Shown so a measurement can be compared with the record. This band does not re-rank presentations.
Published range
72–82°F
Published span
58–88°F
Cold edge
48°F
Warm edge
92°F

Context only. A documented basis has not been written for these numbers, so they do not re-rank presentations.

Context only until a review documents whether this is a preference or only where the fish has been found. These figures do not re-rank presentations.

How it uses water

Behaviour

Family groups are not target aggregations.

Strong odor and bottom delivery can matter more than lure-like visual matching. Omnivorous on invertebrates, detritus-associated prey, and small fish.

Low-light and nocturnal feeding is common; olfaction reduces dependence on visibility.

Temperature-driven behaviourEspecially tolerant of warm, turbid, low-gradient water.

Depth movementBottom-oriented, often shallow at night and deeper or tighter to cover in bright conditions.

Facing the currentSlow, turbid, soft-bottomed water with little current.

ClarityTurbidity is normal habitat, not a problem to wait out.

CoverBasins, wood, weed edges, and soft-bottom flats as feeding ground.

Open waterNot pelagic.

Predator avoidanceNight, turbidity, and cover.

Spawning (conservation context)Late-spring and summer cavity/depression spawning in protected shallow habitat. Family groups are not target aggregations.

Where the general rule stops

  • Strong odor and bottom delivery can matter more than lure-like visual matching.
  • Do not collapse all bullheads into this thermal and habitat profile.

What it can eat

Forage

A capacity list, not a report from this week. What is actually available on your water is a separate question, and Hatch Match is the tool that asks it.
  • Worms / annelids
  • Aquatic insects
  • Crustaceans
  • Mollusks
  • Small forage fish

Highly tolerant benthic omnivore of turbid, soft-bottomed water. Diet overlaps brown bullhead; habitat tolerance is the distinction, not a unique prey list.

Feeding style
Opportunistic
Feeding zone
Benthic

Through the year

Winter
Deeper or tighter to cover; reduced feeding.
Spring
Benthos as water warms. Cavity/depression spawning is conservation context.
Summer
Night feeding on worms, insects, crustaceans, mollusks, and small fish.
Fall
Continued benthic omnivory.

By life stage

Young of year
Tiny invertebrates. Family groups are not target aggregations.
Juvenile
Insects and worms.
Adult
Broad benthic omnivory.

Ontogenetic shiftInvertebrates to mixed benthic omnivory.

SubstitutionsTurbid ponds and sloughs emphasize detritus-associated invertebrates. Clearer lakes overlap brown bullhead diets.

Diet capacity is not proof that a hatch or prey event is occurring. Observed current forage still comes from a user observation or Hatch Match.

Through the year

Season

Black bullhead tolerate turbid, soft-bottomed, low-current water that excludes many sight-oriented fishes. The calendar is still nocturnal and benthic.

Winter

Where they sit
Deeper basins and cover.

What that changesBottom-contact and slow-drag.

Spring

Where they sit
Protected shallow habitat in slow, often turbid water.

What that changesStationary-bait and bottom-contact drift.

Late-spring and summer cavity/depression spawning. Family groups are not target aggregations.

Summer

Where they sit
Shallow flats at night; deeper or tighter to cover in bright conditions.
Light
Low-light and nocturnal feeding is common; olfaction reduces dependence on visibility.

What that changesBottom-contact, slow-drag, and live-natural-bait suspension.

Fall

Where they sit
Inlets and remaining soft-bottom cover.

What that changesStationary-bait.

Spawning · Spring, Early summer, Summer

Late-spring and summer cavity/depression spawning occurs in protected shallow habitat; family groups are not target aggregations.

Recorded as conservation context. No spawning site, staging concentration or migration bottleneck is named anywhere in this catalog, because naming one is how a population gets fished out.

Telling it apart

Identification

Dark olive-black to yellowish-brown in turbid water; belly paler. Chin barbels remain dark.

Body form Stocky bullhead with a slightly notched tail; TPWD notes Ameiurus refers to that slight caudal notch.

Adult A dark-chinned, usually unmottled bullhead with a slightly notched tail.

What to look at

  • TPWD: chin barbels dark or black, never white.
  • TPWD: typically black to greenish-black on the back, white on the belly; in muddy water the back may be yellowish-brown.
  • Body generally unmottled compared with brown bullhead.
  • Pectoral spines weakly barbed / almost smooth (Noble / regional keys), unlike brown and yellow.
  • Caudal slightly notched.
Average adult length
Common adults often 8–12 in.
Common angling size
8–11 in.
Typical weight
Often 0.4–1.2 lb.
Maximum documented
Fish of a few pounds occur. TPWD treats them as typically smaller than important game catfishes.

What it gets confused with

Brown bullhead
Brown bullhead are mottled and have strongly barbed pectoral spines. Both have dark chin barbels.
Yellow bullhead
Yellow bullhead have white chin barbels and a square to slightly rounded, un-notched tail (TPWD).

What follows from all of that

Presentation families

These are the families the record will consider for this fish, and what each one has to do. They are not ranked here — ranking needs a season, a temperature and a piece of holding water, which is what the reading is for.

Stillwater

Bottom contact

Keep a bait on or just above the substrate along a break, flat, or inside a weed edge.

  • feel bottom
  • drag or hop
  • pause on the break
  • stay in contact
What it asks of the tackle
Depth control
High
Sensitivity
High
Casting distance
Moderate
Weight range
1/8–1/2 oz
Cover resistance
High
Line visibility
Low
Retie frequency
High

Slow drag

Move a bait along the bottom slowly enough that it stays in the feeding layer of inactive fish.

  • continuous contact
  • very slow travel
  • pause at changes in bottom
  • do not hop out of the zone
What it asks of the tackle
Depth control
High
Sensitivity
High
Casting distance
Moderate
Weight range
1/8–3/8 oz
Cover resistance
Moderate
Line visibility
Low
Retie frequency
Moderate

Live / natural bait suspension

Present a natural food form with enough life or scent to hold in a station without looking mechanical.

  • keep it alive or fresh
  • match the holding depth
  • minimize hardware bulk
  • detect without pulling it away
What it asks of the tackle
Depth control
High
Sensitivity
High
Casting distance
Short to moderate
Weight range
As light as conditions allow
Cover resistance
Moderate
Line visibility
Low
Retie frequency
High

Flowing water

Stationary bait

Hold a scent or food form in one feeding station and wait for a fish to move to it.

  • anchor the presentation
  • keep bait in the pocket
  • detect takes without sweeping
  • refresh often
What it asks of the tackle
Depth control
High
Sensitivity
Moderate
Casting distance
Short
Weight range
1/4–1 oz
Cover resistance
High
Line visibility
Moderate
Retie frequency
High

Bottom-contact drift

Tick or crawl a food form along the substrate through a feeding lane without snagging constantly.

  • feel the bottom
  • short hops
  • reset after hang
  • weight just enough
What it asks of the tackle
Depth control
High
Sensitivity
High
Casting distance
Moderate
Weight range
1/8–3/8 oz
Cover resistance
Moderate
Line visibility
Low
Retie frequency
Moderate

What moves them for this fish

Reviewed rules that push particular families up when the conditions match. Each one names the conditions it needs and why it exists, so you can disagree with it.

  • Black bullhead are especially tolerant of turbid soft-bottom water; keep the record bottom/scent oriented even when visibility is poor.

    When

    Eddy, Deep pool, Side channel, Basin, Wood, Shallow flat, Inlet

    Moves up

    Stationary bait, Bottom-contact drift, Bottom contact, Slow drag, Live / natural bait suspension

    Reviewed 2026-08-27

Where every sentence came from

Sources

Reviewed 2026-08-27, next review 2026-11-27. Each entry says which part of the page leans on it, so you can check the claim you care about rather than the whole list.

  1. Agency

    Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife black bullhead sportfish account

    Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families; identification; behaviour; forage; season. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-27.

  2. Agency

    Texas Parks and Wildlife black bullhead species account

    Used for identification. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-25.

  3. Agency

    Texas Parks and Wildlife black bullhead species account

    Used for behaviour. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-21.

  4. Synthesis

    North American bullhead life-history syntheses

    Used for habitat, thermal band and presentation families; forage. Read 2026-08-30, next check 2026-11-27.

A source with no link predates the rule that one has to carry a URL. It is still a real citation and still checkable; it just takes a search rather than a click, and that is worth knowing before you rely on it.