Everything Fresh Water Fishing
I posted about a very unique Texas catfish earlier and we now have a picture of that fish thanks to Professor Tim Bonner!
So if you’d like to see the picture of the “killer whale” colored catfish, just click on the link below to take you to the updated post which now has the picture!
Catch you later.
There’s so much information to be found on the Internet!
I was reading about a gentleman who caught a rather large catfish in Texas last month. How large – the catfish weighed 45 pounds, measured 41 inches long, had 28 inches in girth and was 9½ inches across its head. Oh! … And it was caught on 6 lb test line!
Now I know that certainly isn’t a world record fish, but you’ve got to give props to the guy for landing such a large fish on such light gear! Unfortunately there was no picture of the fish in the article I was reading. Perhaps that’s because he was too embarrassed to show the pink spinning reel he was using! (He claimed it was his wife’s!) lol
But I digress … The reel (pun intended) reason for the topic of this post is the other catfish caught down in Texas. The one that had the coloring which was similar to a killer whale! The size of the fish was not given, but the coloring was. The catfish was “a blue catfish that was colored in a vivid black and white pattern, much like a killer whale.” Very unique coloring for sure!
Turns out that this wasn’t the first catfish caught in that lake that had this coloring. There were 3 – 4 other fish caught in the last 4 decades that exhibited this coloring pattern. Another fellow, who is the curator of aquaria for the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center, said that he had a “black and white blue catfish on display in that facility that eventually reverted to a normal bluish gray color. The same thing happened to a killer whale-colored blue cat in Cabela’s Fort Worth store, where curator Tim Huebner said it took about 18 months for the fish to morph into a traditional color.”
Biology professor Tim Bonner at Texas State stated that the condition is called partial albinism and could result from an injury or stress caused by environmental conditions. Who said that the chameleon is the only animal to change its color?
So I was wondering what it was that was in that lake in Texas that was causing such stressed out catfish? Perhaps the fish there can read and all the bad news going around is stressing out those poor cats! Hah – guess we’ll never know!
If you’d like to read the article, you can find it here:
Have a good day and I’ll catch you later!
Editor’s Note: Biology professor Tim Bonner at Texas State was kind enough to send a picture of the uniquely colored catfish for everyone to view. He said the picture was sent to him from Texas Parks and Wildlife fish biologist – Bruce Hysmith (the actual photographer is unknown). So here’s the picture and many thanks to Professor Bonner!
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It seems that wherever fishermen are, there will always be a debate as to which is better for consistently catching fish – lures or bait.
My brother and I used to fish together very frequently when we were younger. He was a bait fisherman much more so than I. We found a great little freshwater fishing stream close to our house which was crammed full of catfish. We enjoyed fishing there and would even get up early on Sunday mornings, before Sunday School, and go fishing for an hour or more.
He would use a bobber and live worms and I would use my secret spinner (the one I used to catch that mysterious fish in my last post!) Being true Americans, we would always be competing to see who could catch the most fish! It was always very close. Some days he would win, other days I would. We would always catch more than 1 too – never kept them – strictly catch and release.
No one I talked to ever used a spinner to catch catfish and they all looked at me as if I was a little crazy for even thinking about it! 😉 In our area, catfish were considered bait only fish! But trust me, my spinner was deadly for catfishing! I would cast it out, let it sink to the bottom and then slowly reel it in, twitching it every once in a while. The catfish loved it!
So which was better? Our conclusion was that neither was better. It came down to a preference on the fisherman’s part. I still prefer lures over bait. But I’ll use bait when I don’t have what I consider to be an appropriate lure for the type of fish I’m after.
How about you? Which do you prefer, lure or bait? Leave a comment and let me know?
Catch you later!