Monster Fish

[CarpeNemo]

Well well...after talking with some family members about a local lake that I more or less believe a catfish the size of a large car lives in, I decided to look into largest fish.

National Geographic has an extremely interesting bit on what is believed to be the largest freshwater fish ever caught - a catfish no less. Check it out here: National Geographic : Grizzly Bear-sized Catfish caught in Thailand

Also interesting is the story of Kuno, the dog eating catfish: Kuno, the Dog Eating Catfish

Interesting is this (unconfirmed if true) old picture, found on Google image search:

Being someone who is strangely terrified of fish, the concept of freshwater fish that could eat me in a single bite is enough to scare the absolute shit out of me.

Well, I came back to make sure I spelled at least most of my words properly, and realized that I forgot to write why I bothered to post this:

It's occured to me that the lake near where I live (which is pretty damn large, called Grenada Lake) has had a couple reports of a large swimming creature going past boats and such. And since Catfish live in waters across the world - what if these Loch Ness type monsters are nothing more than gargantuan Catfish or fishes of different breeds we have yet to come across?

 

[Num7]

Nice story! There are quite a bit of those giant fishes reports posted in the section of the forum. I like the idea that some massive fish may be lurking in our lakes.

That being said, I can't truly explain how such a big fish can exist. I mean, do a normal fish live so long that it may become massive like this one we see on the picture you posted? Or, is it a prehistoric fish? Hmm I don't think it's a prehistoric fish. Perhaps some decease didn't stop the fish from growing?

What do you think?

 

[CarpeNemo]

Considering a lot of my family are fisherman, I take their word on how they claim fish act.

One of my closer cousins, a big catfish lover, says that catfish don't exactly stop growing until they reach a certain point where they peak out in their ecosystems. And that the Behemoths I'm talking about are probably 30+ years old. He says that really large catfish will sit at the bottom of a whirlpool, and whatever gets sucked down (like smaller fish or whatever) gets sucked on down by the catfish. Imagine, a Behemoth sitting at the bottom of a whirlpool for a few decades. In theory, they could get as large as a giant shark.

But as I said it depends on ecosystem. Noting Kuno up there, he only weighed 77 pounds, but also strangely only lived in two feet of water. I'm sure had the pond he lived in been deeper, he would have got a lot bigger. No doubt in my mind he ate a dog.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure there are some lakes and ponds in this world deep enough to hold a four-door sport sedan catfish, that could easily be mistaken for things like a plesiosaur. Especially since these fish would rarely if ever come near the surface, it would be hard to track them down if they went back to the bottom.