Common catfish (European, river) - a large freshwater fish that does not have scales. This predator, living in rivers and lakes, is the largest freshwater fish, second in size only to the beluga. True, it is an anadromous fish that enters rivers to spawn.
Classification:
- Class - Pisces (Pisces).
- Family - Siluroidea (Catfish).
- Squad - Siluriformes (Catfish).
- View - Esox lucius (Common catfish).
- Genus – Siluridae (Common catfish).
Distribution
Common catfish is common in lakes and rivers in Europe, with the exception of Italy, Norway, Scotland, Spain and England. Representatives of the species are found in southern Sweden and Finland. The range of catfish in the south is limited by the coastal waters of the Aegean and Black Seas, in Asia it is limited by the Aral Sea. The common catfish, whose photo you can see below, lives in rivers flowing into the B altic, Caspian and Black Seas.
European catfish is a sedentary fish. He spends almost his entire life in the same hole, occasionallyleaving it in search of food. Only during the spawning period, in spring, does the catfish leave its home and move upstream, entering floodplain lakes and river floodplains for spawning.
Common catfish does not tolerate muddy water at all. For this reason, these fish go to the mouths of tributaries during floods - in search of clean water. For the same reason, during high water, he most often prefers to be in floodplain lakes or in the floodplain of a river.
Common catfish: structure
This fish has unusual appearance. It is unlikely that someone will call him an outstanding handsome man among the underwater inhabitants. A huge head by weight is ¼ of the total mass of the fish, a large mouth contains many sharp, but small teeth, disproportionately small eyes are close to the back of the head. A pair of rather long whiskers is found on the upper lip, and on the chin are two more pairs of small antennae. This is what a common catfish looks like. The appearance of this predator is not the most attractive.
The body in the front is rounded, strongly compressed in the back and sides. It smoothly passes into the tail fin. The dorsal fin is short, located rather close to the head. The anal, longer fin is connected to the caudal. At first glance, it seems that the huge head of the fish smoothly passes into the tail.
Color
Common catfish, the description of which is often found in publications for amateur anglers, and the color is rather modest: the back is black, the belly is white with a yellowish tint. Scales on the body completelyis absent. It is thickly covered with mucus, which protects the catfish skin from parasites.
Size of catfish
At the beginning of this article, we already said that common catfish is a large fish, but many of our readers do not even suspect how much. Often the body length reaches four meters, and the weight is one hundred and eighty kilograms. And this is not the limit. There are much larger specimens. Catfish grow very quickly in the first five or six years. Gradually, their growth slows down, and by the age of eight, the fish weighs seventeen kilograms.
Instances with maximum weight are extremely rare. For example, in the nineteenth century, giants were recorded, more than three meters long and weighing 220 kg. In 1856, an ordinary catfish weighing about 400 kg and almost five meters long was caught on the Dnieper.
Currently, specimens no more than 1.6 meters long are more common. For modern anglers, it is considered a great joy and great luck to be able to catch a fish one and a half meters long and weighing more than twenty kilograms. The maximum weight of individuals of this species, recorded in our time, is a length of 2.78 meters and a weight of 144 kg.
Lifestyle
The common catfish is a well-known homebody: it does not migrate from its usual habitat. As a rule, spawning and feeding areas are located next to it. These fish prefer a solitary lifestyle, they gather in large flocks in cold weather. They lay down in deep holes and stop feeding until spring.
Common catfish is a large predator, the leading benthic specieslife. He feels most comfortable in quiet parts of the reservoir. He needs holes, snags, caves.
Common catfish hunts from ambush. Hiding in a secluded place, he makes a swift throw and catches his prey. In shallow water, where you can see the course of young fish, a flock of catfish usually hunts. They line up against the current, open their mouths and swallow flocks of small fish. During the day, ordinary catfish lie in a pit or cave, and go hunting only at night or at dusk. A mustache and sensitive skin help him detect a victim.
In October-November, common catfish stops eating and lies in holes before other fish, while it buries its head in the mud. Since at this time catfish do not pose any danger to other underwater inhabitants, other large fish, most often carp, fit into the same pits for wintering.
Food
Since the common catfish is a predator, it is quite natural that the basis of its diet is fish, of all sizes and types. Large individuals, whose weight exceeds 30 kg, are rather clumsy and clumsy creatures. They, as a rule, catch fry, which are drawn into the mouth along with water. Sometimes they hide in a secluded corner and lure larger fish with their whiskers, which resemble worms underwater.
Large specimens prey on any living creature that floats on the water: waterfowl and their chicks, small animals.
In addition, the catfish also eats:
- crayfish;
- leeches;
- river clams;
- creeps out;
- frogs.
Reproduction
Like most predatory fish, the common catfish matures very quickly and becomes sexually mature in the fourth year of life. The ability to reproduce in this species of catfish occurs when the fish reaches a size of about 60 cm and a weight of 3 kg. Such parameters are typical for a five-year-old catfish. Depending on the region in which the common catfish lives, reproduction (spawning) can occur in summer or spring.
This process requires a water temperature of +17…+20 °C. Under favorable conditions, female European catfish throw two portions of caviar - up to 30 thousand eggs. The heavier and larger the female, the more caviar she throws. The size of the eggs is no more than three millimeters.
Preparing for spawning, the female builds a nest at the bottom of a lake or river. As a rule, this is a rounded shallow hole, overgrown with aquatic plants. It is located in shallow water, at a distance of at least seventy centimeters from the surface of the water.
Caviar is large and sticky, so it instantly sticks to the walls and bottom of the nest.
Eggs develop very quickly - 3-10 days. From eggs, larvae are first formed. Then the yolk sac dissolves, and fry are born, no more than 15 mm long. All this time the male guards the nest. The young grow very quickly, especially in the southern rivers. In the first year of life, the fry grows up to 40 cm and gains about 500 grams. At the same time, there is a high percentage of death of individuals in the youngage. Only 5% of the young of this catfish species survive to a year.
Life after spawning
After breeding, catfish return to their usual habitats - deep pits. The more inaccessible and deeper the pit, the more shelters and snags in it, the more numerous and larger the catfish living in it. At the same time, silence and the presence of shelters in the habitats of fish are more important than the depth of the reservoir. Young specimens weighing less than 15 kg swim at a depth of three meters, usually near dams, under overhanging banks or under the roots of washed-out trees.
Common catfish: lifespan
This fish belongs to centenarians. Scientists claim that they can live up to fifty years. But not every ordinary catfish lives to such a venerable age. How long do these fish live in natural conditions? Average life expectancy is (under favorable conditions) thirty to thirty-five years.
Catfishing
This is a very exciting process for both professional anglers and amateurs. Summer is the best time to fish for this fish. A good bite happens in windless warm weather after sunset and before dawn. Catfish feed constantly, but not with the same greed. At dawn, before sunrise and at night, catfish peck quite actively. And if it drizzles lightly, then fishing is possible throughout the day.
It is more profitable to throw tackle not over the pit itself, but in the way of the catfish's night hunting. Usually he goes the same way. The best place is the rifts, which are especiallyrich in live bait, which can be any fish that are distinguished by long survivability. An excellent bait, according to fishermen, is a loach, but sometimes the catfish breaks it off, because the fish is strung by the lips.
Often, large fish are used as bait, although this is not entirely justified. Offal of fish and poultry, leeches, fried poultry, a piece of catfish meat are not of interest. But the smell of singed wool or feathers is very attractive for this fish. For bait, you can use crayfish during their molt, when the shell is very soft.
Perhaps the catfish's favorite delicacy is the frog. The most interesting way of fishing is based on this preference of his - shredding. Donkeys are used to catch catfish, throwing bait into the intended feeding places of this fish.
The rod must be tied to a stake driven into the ground or strong branches, since the bite of even four-kilogram specimens is very sharp and the rod breaks off in a matter of seconds. Experienced anglers claim that the bite can be so powerful that a rod (test 190 g) 1.9 meters long, like a spring, takes off into the air and a completely new monoline (0.3) breaks at the same moment.
Economic value
Common catfish is a commercial species. Its value lies not only in tender and fatty meat: excellent glue was obtained from the swim bladder of this fish, and in ancient times the washed skin of catfish was used as “glass” in windows. In the thirties of the last century, its catches in some reservoirs reached 4.2 thousandtons, but today they have decreased significantly.
Protection status
Unfortunately, due to uncontrolled fishing, including poaching, the number of common catfish has decreased almost everywhere. In many reservoirs where it used to live in large numbers, catfish has become a rare guest. In this regard, in many regions it is under protection. At the edges of the range, catfish is especially rare, for example, in Karelia in 1995 it was listed in the Red Book as an endangered rare species.
