i am the catfish king(wels catfish)
- Thread starter oscar n redtail cat
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basslover34;2287510; said:
and i think ive seen some big wels hitting the 600lb mark and bigger i think the biggest 1 (was found dead) at 900lb not sure though(and that was not in the uk 
to cool 
)ive got my inporter on it im getting a 7-10" rtcxtsn off him hes having a look just text me that its gonna take a whillle but hes still lookingwayne the pain;2288671; said:
900lbs?...oscar n redtail cat;2290381; said:
600lbs....Find some of these pics... I would LOVE to see those
ill have a look ino there a cupple hitting the 11ft mark and waying a lot like 700lb ill post the pic of it in a second and my wels is eating white fish fillets so far try and get him off live food (will toss in the odd gold fish know n then) lool
try and get him off live food (will toss in the odd gold fish know n then) lool
and is the some other kind of wels catfish ??? because the bloke who i got said it was a Silurus glanis ????
Silurus glanis is a scientific name of Wels catfish. There are two species with another species, Silurus aristotelis.oscar n redtail cat;2290517; said:
Looking at the old pic there's no real way to say it's a sturgeon or a wells. I just know I've always seen it labeled as a wels. It's true that you would expect catfish wiskers to be present, but one thing you cannot tell from the pic is how long this fish was exposed to the elements. It could be decayed. Looking at some pics in a museum archive it's easy to see how this might actually be a beluga sturgeon. It's strange that so many sites would label it as a wels though.
I'm by no means an expert on wels and can only tell what I have read and been told by others. I'd have to say thought that if it is a beluga it has been slightly butchered already.
As for a hypothetical stance I will never rule out the possibility of a 500+ lbs wels. I wouldn't even rule out ones much larger than that. As with both North American and South american catfish(as well as other round the world) there has been an exstensive reduction in mature adult specimen size over the last 150 years. There are many credible reports of Blue Catfish for instance being bought by museums in the early 1900s over 200-300 lbs. The skeleton of one that weighed 250 lbs still exists in one of the major museums in New York. I'd have to look all the info back up, but this is definitely no phoney. Now though they have been over fished, and their natural habitat has been cannalized, and dammed up so much that these fish are drastically decreasing in size. There have been commercially caught fish over 150 lbs, but nothing over 200 lbs in the last hundred years.
Even Jau(Zungaro zungaro), and Piraiba(Brachyplatystoma filamentosum), as well as RTC have all seen drastic reductions in their max size. There are charts and museum records available if you know who to ask. You can actually ask most museums and they will give you a behind the scenes look at their collections. What is displayed is only a fraction of what really exists. For instance I've viewed a collection which housed the skull of a blue catfish that dated 12,000 years old. It was about 2.5' long, and the paleontologists have determined it could have weighed in the range of 900-1300 lbs. It was found in historical mississippi flood planes.
I'm by no means an expert on wels and can only tell what I have read and been told by others. I'd have to say thought that if it is a beluga it has been slightly butchered already.
As for a hypothetical stance I will never rule out the possibility of a 500+ lbs wels. I wouldn't even rule out ones much larger than that. As with both North American and South american catfish(as well as other round the world) there has been an exstensive reduction in mature adult specimen size over the last 150 years. There are many credible reports of Blue Catfish for instance being bought by museums in the early 1900s over 200-300 lbs. The skeleton of one that weighed 250 lbs still exists in one of the major museums in New York. I'd have to look all the info back up, but this is definitely no phoney. Now though they have been over fished, and their natural habitat has been cannalized, and dammed up so much that these fish are drastically decreasing in size. There have been commercially caught fish over 150 lbs, but nothing over 200 lbs in the last hundred years.
Even Jau(Zungaro zungaro), and Piraiba(Brachyplatystoma filamentosum), as well as RTC have all seen drastic reductions in their max size. There are charts and museum records available if you know who to ask. You can actually ask most museums and they will give you a behind the scenes look at their collections. What is displayed is only a fraction of what really exists. For instance I've viewed a collection which housed the skull of a blue catfish that dated 12,000 years old. It was about 2.5' long, and the paleontologists have determined it could have weighed in the range of 900-1300 lbs. It was found in historical mississippi flood planes.
I was talking to a customer in the store yesterday and his job is to design fishery lakes and knows of a 40 mile lake in france that houses 2 HUGE wels that have just studdendly started to beat each other up so they had to go out and catch one and move it,
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