Giant Wels Catfish caught 115lbs

[donpetty]

I came across this article and thought it was interesting:
Giant Wels Catfish Caught By Fisherman Rodney Hills Weighed Almost 115 Pounds
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/1 ... ostpopular

Don

[Viktor Jarikov]

Caught second time around...

We are running out of the large fish to catch...

[racoll]

The UK wels are tiddlers compared to those on continental Europe. They get to nearly triple this weight.

[Viktor Jarikov]

And the biggest ones caught around the post-soviet territories, especially Volga river and Dnepr river, used to be even 1.5-2 times heavier than the western/central european ones but these have become very rare now.

[donpetty]

I'm not much of an angler anymore but years ago I lived in North Pole, Alaska.
The biggest fish I have landed was a 249 lb Halibut in south east Alaska
in the 80's. Because, I know there are large "Cat" fans here is why when I saw this
article I thought I'd share.

Don

[FerocactusLatispinus]

Spain's Ebro River is the best place to fish for the Wels. If I've read correctly, they can live up to about 80 years and, at that dam, put on about 10 pounds a year. The Holy Grail of this cat would then be about the size of the fish supposedly caught in the Dnepr River in 1856, as reported by K. T. Kessler. That was a 16-foot, 880 pound animal. An 80 year old cat in the Ebro would definitely get big. We won't see that for decades of course, since they are a recently-introduced species in that river. The Ebro is definitely not a place to take a dip.

[Viktor Jarikov]

From what I vaguely remember, the Spaniards heavily feed the wels and/or their prey in Ebro... I think obviously to attract fishing tourism.

[minipol]

The cats in the Ebro are depicted in old paintings from the middle ages where they were dragging man into the water.
It's doesn't take a big cat to hold a man under water. You simply drown and end of story.
Especially small children are at risk when the river contains such large cats as in the Ebro.

[racoll]

The cats in the Ebro are depicted in old paintings from the middle ages where they were dragging man into the water.

I don't think this is correct. Wels were introduced in Spain in 1974.

[minipol]

I'm not saying it was this species of catfish.
Different species of catfish have been around inn European waters.
It was featured in an episode of River monsters if I recall correctly.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that during that documentary, the showed medieval
paintings where a fish dragged a child into the water.

[racoll]

I'm not saying it was this species of catfish.
Different species of catfish have been around inn European waters.

I did see this episode, but I don't remember the details.

However, there was only one catfish species present in Europe in the middle ages, and this was S. glanis. The species was not present in Spain at this time though, so the paintings could not have been from Spain.

[minipol]

That could have been the case, I don't remember the details on that painting, I was more interested in the catfish

[FerocactusLatispinus]

I remember that European Maneater episode. Yeah, that painting of the Wels was startling to see at first. I do think it's funny how centuries-old paintings depict monster fish with horns and tusks! It does make the report of these monsters lose their credibility right off the bat, but I don't doubt there were, are, and will be giants among catfish species.

Atomic Assassin was that other episode featuring the Wels, based at the Chernobyl disaster site. I was surprised when I saw that photograph of the Wels with a second lower jaw (I have a feeling it might be a doctored photo, but I doubt it; hopefully it is: that would be horrible to live with a mutation like that).

[minipol]

Indeed, and as noted earlier, the catfish don't even have to be that large to be able to drag a man down,
that's the scary part. If you know that some species can get super big, it's really a surprise not more
people are involved in catfish accident.
There was an episode with a giant white sturgeon, where a witness claimed to have seen it from a small airplane.

[FerocactusLatispinus]

Yeah, I had no idea there was such a thing as a predatory sturgeon! The Kaluga, boy that'd be a frightening beast to run into underwater. Near here in Shawano, Wisconsin we have the annual sturgeon run and even at just 6', they are really massive fish; I've seen them from atop a trestle and have even put my hand into the water and a small one came up, sniffed it so to speak, and let me stroke it's side once before darting off. I've only seen the runs maybe three times, but it's really something to see them jumping out of the water to get over the dam!