Giant Catfish Caught in Mekong River (Thailand)

[Canuckistanian]

HAT KHRAI, Thailand - The monster fish announced itself with four huge whacks of its tail, thrashing against the net that had trapped it in the pale brown water of the Mekong River.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/international/asia/26thailand.html?8hpib


Suthep Kritsanavarin

Fishermen at Hat Khrai slice the catfish for sale. The giant catfish have been disappearing fast, with only a few now caught.

It was a rare giant catfish the size of a grizzly bear, and it took five boatmen an hour to pull it in and 10 men to lift it when they reached the shore in this remote village in northern Thailand.

Only after their catch had been chopped into pieces and sold did they learn how special it was. At nine feet in length and weighing 646 pounds, it may be the biggest freshwater fish ever recorded.

But in one of the world's more surprising mysteries, nobody really knows which is the biggest species of fish lurking under the waters of the Mekong or the Amazon or the Yangtze or the Congo or the Colorado or Lake Baikal.

On edit: Oops, forgot to include link

[NYC]

1. That's huge.

Thanks for posting the pictures.

[iconoclastic cat]

2. I need a beer, some thick, greasy fries, and six pounds of breading, NOW!

Oh, and a tub of tartar sauce.

[kentuck]

5. Thanks Iconoclastic cat !

I needed that laugh ! :)

[iconoclastic cat]

6. Why, what's up? Existential angst?

[kentuck]

10. Existential angst ?

Perhaps? :shrug:

[girl gone mad]

3. Gee.. I wonder why they are disappearing..

"Only after their catch had been chopped into pieces and sold did they learn how special it was. At nine feet in length and weighing 646 pounds, it may be the biggest freshwater fish ever recorded."

[RagAss]

4. they'll be needing quite the frying pan for this baby..

[Elidor]

7. The monster fish announced itself with ten 90-lb steaks

Ye Gods. Look at that steak. I could gnaw on that for a week.

People tell tales of a damn in Georgia with a catfish big enough to eat a man. If you saw one this big, you could be forgiven for a little hyperbole. What a magnificent beast.

[Lars39]

8. Same rumors about TN River near New Johnsonville.

Pearl divers' sightings.

[kentuck]

11. Jackson Lake ... in Georgia...

I heard tales when I lived in GA that something was stopping the flow of water thru the dam and they sent some divers down to investigate. They came back hurriedly and said there were catfish big enough to eat a man... At least, that 's the tale.

[Elidor]

14. Yes, that's the tale I heard

One of them was said to have been scared shitless by what he had seen. But I used to hear variants of this kind of thing when I was a land surveyor. You never really know what to believe, though I can believe in a catfish that big. It's no stranger than alligators in the sewer.

[Peter Frank]

9. ...

"...Called Pla Buek in Thai, the giant catfish can weigh as much as 650 pounds (300 kilograms) and measure up to 10 feet (3 meters) in length. They are the largest scaleless freshwater fish in the world.

Chainarong Sretthachau, director of the conservation group Southeast Asia Rivers Network in Chiang Mai, Thailand, said threats to the giant catfish include commercial fishing, their touting to tourists as a food said to impart wisdom, and dynamite blasting of their spawning ground."



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0515_030515_giantcatfish.html

[sakabatou]

12. That's freaking huge!

[B Calm]

13. Here in America, redneck poachers throw giant flathead catfish in

the bed of their pickup trucks and drive around showing people their catch. After a couple days of showing it off they throw the dead rotten fish away. No one cares that it took 100 years for the catfish to grow that large only to be wasted..

[Horse with no Name]

15. Hot damn! Imagine finding one of those in your trot line

I can just hear Bubba now..."Y'all ain't gonna believe this shit"

[skids]

16. And in saltwater fishing... record 873 pound mercury-laced tuna...

Link to earlier thread...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x29794

...What, are we returning to the paleolithic era?