Brazilian Ice Fishing video

[apistomaster]

I came across this peculiar but interesting video showing fisherman catching big Tiger Cats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr0hdY_94K8

[Silurus]

This reminds me of the method of catching

Channallabes

by digging a hole in a swampy forest and letting it fill up with water before catching the clariids with baited handlines. I recall seeing a video of this somewhere, but can't remember where I might have seen it.

[fischkringli]

How many tiger cats are living there! They only have to wait a minute!

[apistomaster]

How many tiger cats are living there! They only have to wait a minute!

I imagine they edited out most of the time spent waiting for a bite; never seen any fishing show that did not do that.
I wondered if the fishermen were fishing a seasonal oxbow during the dry season when the fish were cut off from the main river channel and had become concentrated in a small body of water. In any case, I have never seen anything quite like it.
As they began to dig, I first expected that the fishermen were searching for estivating lungfish and was surprised when they began setting the bait and began catching those big catfish.
I thought the video was an excellent demonstration of why these catfish are inappropriate for any but the very largest of aquariums such as those provided by major public aquariums.

[pleco_breeder]

In order to understand that video, still exceptional, you have to realize that the plants they're fishing through are actually floating. You can see the mud they're pulling up, but that's what's tangled in "centuries?" of roots and constant growth. The pantanals are famous for them. They're not small islands as they're not connected on the bottom.

There are all sorts of gimmick fishing videos on youtube. I watched one years ago showing them catching pirahna that was hillarious, but can't find now. Fisherman was apparently afraid of them, or trying to be funny, because each was smacked squarely between the eyes with a small stick. I doubt this having any real effect of preventing a bite as portrayed in the video, but was kinda comical if taken in the intended context.

Larry