chernoble catfish

[Acheloos]

The site englishrussia is a highly unrespectable site, and they wrote tons of BS. This story is also complete nonsense. As already posted by others before, Silurus glanis anyway occurs in this region. And they can grow very big too (but not 3-4m of course). But all those stories about radioactivity which causes monster-sized fish is really stupid. And the story of the diver as well. The teeth of the wels are extremely tiny, and there is no way in which thy could mutilate a human.
The River Po in Italy was already stocked at the beginning of the 20th century with Silurus glanis, and actually the biggest ones comes from there. They have warm water temperatures, masses of baitfish, and some of them had well over a half century to grow. But still we haven´t seen a single one at least breaking the 3m.

 

[mkman]

Acheloos, you wait, someone will catch a 3m, 200 kg Wels one day Just a matter of time in my opinion

 

[basslover34]

The whole Chernoble area is actually an amazing thing if you take the time to really study it... there are masses of wild life that moved in after the "incident" that have thrived there... and are breeding which was beleived wouldn't happen for hundreds of years when this whole story orginally happened.

I think that everything is a big deal and considered news worthy there, just due to the history...

No body ever thinks about the fact that Hiroshima was a much deadlier and smaller demonstration of the power of radiation.

Either way it's nice to see a vid of a wild Wels

 

[basslover34]

Acheloos, you wait, someone will catch a 3m, 200 kg Wels one day Just a matter of time in my opinion

Considering the fact that Wels have only been introduced into warm weather climates in the last 50ish years and we are seeing LOTS of 8'ers in the 200 pound range... it's very likly that given another 50 years we will see the (some speculate) true Size of these guys

 

[Hayabusa]

The whole Chernoble area is actually an amazing thing if you take the time to really study it... there are masses of wild life that moved in after the "incident" that have thrived there... and are breeding which was beleived wouldn't happen for hundreds of years when this whole story orginally happened.

I think that everything is a big deal and considered news worthy there, just due to the history...

No body ever thinks about the fact that Hiroshima was a much deadlier and smaller demonstration of the power of radiation.

Either way it's nice to see a vid of a wild Wels

This is very true, watched a documentry a couple of years ago that were studying the area to see what happens to towns/citys when humans are removed and how quickly nature comes back and how the buildings slowly decay and return to the earth.

Was very interesting.

On a different note, no one wants to take me up on my mud offer? limeted supplys!

Offer this week buy 1 KG get another totaly free!

 

[Acheloos]

Basslover the wels population in the italian Po Delta is already much older than only 50 years, and the first generation of newly introduced wels also show the best growth, the further generations grow lesser good, as there is much more competition within their own spezies for food. So the largest ones from the Po are probably already very close to the maximum sizes and weights.
BTW, take a look at this site, there are MASSES of giant Wels photos from the Po:
http://www.wels-camp-am-po.sturmnetz.de/hauptseite.html

 

[mkman]

Acheloos, another great site that you have posted. I'm going to look at all the Wels pictures.

There is a german documentary on wels, perhaps you can translate it for me? It even shows baby wels eating worms, etc!

 

[basslover34]

Basslover the wels population in the italian Po Delta is already much older than only 50 years, and the first generation of newly introduced wels also show the best growth, the further generations grow lesser good, as there is much more competition within their own spezies for food. So the largest ones from the Po are probably already very close to the maximum sizes and weights.
BTW, take a look at this site, there are MASSES of giant Wels photos from the Po:
http://www.wels-camp-am-po.sturmnetz.de/hauptseite.html

I have not come across anything in my reading which mentions the introduction into the Po River to be any more than only a few decades ago which I have generously uped to 50 years, My Father in Law used to fish in the Po all the time as a kid and has never seen a wels, I would love to read more about the introduction if you have any material to look at

 

[srikamaraja]

Obviously, humans are the only invasive species here.

 

[Acheloos]

I read it once in a fishing magazine, but couldn´t find the correct dates anymore. But today I bought a new issue of the fishing magazine "Blinker", because there were several interesting articles about the wels. There is now another new monster from the Po, which will very probably become the new IGFA-record. It was 2,53 m and weighed monstrous 118,6 kg. There are several photos of the fish, and the weight was confirmed by many people. But even if we keep in mind that larger ones were already caught with methods which don´t make it possible to accept it for IGFA-rules, it is still interesting that this guy was still not that "big" at all. A length of 2,53 m is monstrous if course, but even the coming world record is far away from 3m. Actually it is only 5cm longer than the one which was caught where I live, but as it was very fat, it weighed 29 kg more.