"Bus sized" catfish???

Heres some pics of big catfish

this ones sinking the canoe


I wouldnt want to touch this fish

That definately looks like a Mekong giant catfish. Here are some links:

www.cnn.com...

news.nationalgeographic.com...

news.nationalgeographic.com...

Unfortunately, as we continue to kill all the large growth sea animals as well as kill them when they are an average size; its getting much harder to find them - we don't give them a chance to grow to those sizes anymore.

Check out this info on the Blue Catfish:
Individuals larger than eight inches eat fish and large invertebrates. Blue catfish commonly attain weights of 20 to 40 pounds, and may reach weights well in excess of 100 pounds. It is reported that fish exceeding 350 pounds were landed from the Mississippi River during the late 1800's.

So, it is entirely possible that an old growth catfish was seen beneath that lake - expertly avoiding humans. As far as the size they say it was, that was probably blown out of proportion. Also, 310 feet? Did they have scuba gear? Because I can't find the whole story.

www.tpwd.state.tx.us...




[Edited on 3-18-2004 by EmbryonicEssence]

I have done a little fishing in my day and a lot of drooling over what world record fish weights and lengths were. I have never heard of a catfish getting over six feet in length or attaining a weight of anything over 150 pounds

I have witnessed a freind pull a sturgeon out of the water at a local salmon fishing hotspot that was at least six feet long, we couldn't weigh it because it was too heavy to pick up and we also wanted to get it back in the water and let it go as soon as possible. He was using a 6ft 6inch fishing rod and as a crude measuring indicator we took his pole and laid it alongside the fish, the fish was about two to three inches longer than his rod so as a conservative guess i would put that fish at somewhere around six feet long.

From what i know about north american catfish and sturgeon they do not eat people nor do they attack swimmers, the reason most big catfish/sturgeon are never seen is because they inhabit waters that humans cannot access, dams and rapids are favored habitats for fish like these. It's an easy way of feeding, they just lay there and wait for the water to bring the food to them.

That being said i realize that there probably are exceptions to the rule but they are just that. The noodling technique i have heard about, i have also heard of tickling where a person reaches their hands under a riverside enbankment and feels blindly for a fish that may be resting, upon feeling a fish they rub their hands along it's belly and at the right time try and haul it up and out of the river. Once in a while people are bit by cottonmouth snakes that they mistake for small fish.

Not to be an sarcastic fool but whoever stated that pike get big enough to eat people is completely wrong, pike and muskellenge are predators but they do not get big enought to eat humans, at best they prey upon ducks and otters that may cross their path but i don't think there has ever been a case of a human being devoured by a pike/muskie.

That first pic on the first page is alittle misleading. Below is a link to another pic of the same fish. It's a Piraiba from the Amazon. It's 100+. They can be up to 700lbs. This and the Mekong Giant Catfish shown earlier in the posts are the largest. Some European species(Wels) used to get up to 16 ft but not these days.

msn.espn.go.com...

I hate to freak you all out...well that's not true. I'd love to freak you out. Check out these pics of Alligator Gar.
www.geocities.com...
I bet you didn't know THEY got so big. I've heard of these things swimming right next to people. Surfacing between fishermen's legs. Luckily they are not aggressive. Yet.

here is another pic of a huge cat. these things can get pretty big. also about the gator gar, it is common to bow hunt them from a boat. i would love to try that.

1 big gator gar shot with a bow.

30-40 pound catfish are caught regularly here in Texas.
Nasty creatures....bottom feeders....live their whole life sucking garbage out of the mud. I wouldn't eat one if it was the last food left on earth. Shudder! Euch. 600 pounds is too much. The beast must be full of fertilizer and toxins.

ummm i dont kno if anybody else notices this but that pic looks like a close up pic of a cat fish, making it seem like its huge bout the size of a ESE bus

by the way i was referring to the pic on the first page. the beached cat fish

i live in the hills of Kentucky, and there is a natrual lake in a rural county, well one night, some guy was supposably drunk and went night-fishing and drowned, well after 3 days, the police went diving into this huge lake, and they found the body bit in half, and they swam later to try to retrieve any body parts, well they swam to this small cave and a catfish the size of a car flew below them with a tail of maybe 6 to 7 feet long, one of the divers died of a heart attack and the other said he never wants to go near water again, he later said he had swam with sharks before, but never will he go around that lake or any other lake again.

Here is a link to Record Fish.

Check out the Sturgon.

www.schoolofflyfishing.com...

There are a lot of urban legonds about big Catfish but I know some of the
tropical Cat's get pretty big.

The link above is for freshwatter fish only.

thats alot of b.s, i have caught fish bigger than that, of course we never turn them in or anything because it ends up looking like this:


but kentucky is also setteled on the Ohio, which produces fish the size of doors daily. Once a dead carp got jammed in a dam cell and it was supposbly 10 feet long, I don't really know....What about other mythological creatures, everyday someone around here see's bigfoot or the "Mothman" in which I think both are true, what about you guys?