news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20..._huge_fish.html

(They should be looking in Wingham!)

Tight Lines - leon

This buisness of "The largest freshwater fish" is most strange! Every thing you read about this subject especially on the Net seems to be contradictory! This article even apears to contradict its self! claiming both the sting ray and Mekong cat to be the biggest!

I have always understood the Aripaima of South America to be the largest "true" freshwater fish? with the Wells Catfish the largest cat?

I suppose how you define "freshwater fish" and largest are important ie if they live there whole lives in it or go to sea for a while? or in the case of the largest fish, how is this ratified and over how many years? I had a disscussion on this subject once on the Net where it was claimed that the Mekong Cat was the biggest at a certain weight but no one could produce a picture of one of even a third of the claimed weight!I have no pictures of 600lb Wells (a top end weight that is often claimed for them) but can produce photos of 250lb fish which more importantly have been caught recently.I have also seen the same for Alligator Gar and Aripaima.

What about the white sturgeon in Canadian rivers such as the Fraser, is that not a true freshwater fish?

Not in this context gorton as it spends a lot of its life cycle in the sea.

Got to be the arapaima 4 me to .There was a program Jungle hooks ,i think on discovery channel said it was the largest fresh water fish in the world.

Its all a bit fuzzy. The 'experts' believe the largest freshwater fish to be the arapaima but I doubt if any of them have seen a really big fish. If you google around, you'll find one 'expert' who believes that they grow to ten feet and 450lbs, one who thinks they grow to 13/14 feet which would put their weight conservatively around the 1000lb mark. Then there are those european species that, as Budgie says, spend a greater part of their lives in the salt. But if we treat those species as salties how do you catagorize salmon, which I suspect most would classify as a freshwater fish. So maybe we should include the wels and the sturgeon in the equation, if they can be caught in freshwater. Its bit like the thread about 'record fish' really. It's interesting, but its just statistics at the end of the day.

And most of these legendary giants are ponderous, plodding submarines, sporting-wise, at best.

I prefer to fly fighter jets, myself.

Paul . . I thought this subject would get your attention.
One or two mahossive Catfish in African rivers, to large for the locals with their balanced jerry can bolt rigs. Then there's South America ?

Two catfish species found in the Congo River are simply VAST, Andrew -- certainly going into the many hundreds of pounds.

But who would want to catch them when Goliath tigerfish, to maybe 200 pounds, are present -- a real 'on-something' fighter jet (and then some), this fish, you see...

South America?

Again, I didn't go for cats and other monsters, but went for another characin, a relative of the tigerfish (the Goliath of the Congo and of the small stuff that you find elsewhere in Africa), I went for things that could hit sixty or seventy pounds in the past, but these days are rarely caught above 30 (but WHAT a thirty...) -- the freshwater dorado of Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and Southern Brazil. These fish are lunatics! I had one of 24.5 lbs after a good few weeks of fishing over several years (and this is a VERY good fish, even the locals told me so) on a FLY fished off an 8-weight fly rod. ON FLY -- "Retire and Go Straight to Heaven" stuff!I had a 35-pounder on a plug, also -- again, a fish of a lifetime, a life-long, Argentine dorado-fisher friend told me. And then there were the giant sea-trout of the Argentine and Chilean South, running to forty pounds -- demented!

I think that I had better go and have a little lie-down...

[ 23. December 2004, 02:25 PM: Message edited by: Paul Boote ]

Perhaps some words in print, much like SDTCR, one day? . . Chasing South American Gold !