Origin
In Europe, from the Rhine to the Ural Mountains, catfish can be found in almost all waters, for example in the river basins of the waters that flow into the Caspian Sea, The Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. The northern limit of its spread is the 60th parallel.
In our country, catfish is the largest freshwater fish; most specimens are fished in the Danube, in its overflow ponds and in the Delta.
But the catfish is also present in many lakes in the interior of the country, besides the Danube, the catfish also occurs in the following rivers: Prut, Siret, Arges, Mures, Olt, Jiu, Somes, Crisuri, Tarnave, Bega, Timis, but sometimes it drags upstream, even reaching some tributaries of these rivers, such as: Negru River, Cibin (tributaries of the Olt), Niraj and Aries (tributaries of Mures).
Feeding Sleep
the catfish first feeds on aquatic insect larvae, but also consumes ephemerides that have fallen on the surface of the waters. He also likes tiny crayfish and worms. At the age of 2-3 months they are already feeding on small fish (brood), the vast majority of food being, from now until the end of life, fish.
Among the fish, he likes oblets, Crucians, Roach, pattern and sandarnits, but also many other species. The hungry catfish is a fearsome predator that swallows almost anything that comes its way. Besides fish, they regularly eat frogs, insects that fall into the water, as well as other animals (mice, ducklings, geese, etc.).
Sometimes he does not miss even the birds, small dogs or other small mammals that swim at the surface of the water. Some claim that catfish also eat carrion, but observations have shown that they eat only live food.
According to some oral traditions, catfish also attack people who bathe in the river, which is unconfirmed. It can happen, however, that, due to an optical illusion, it seems that the catfish is trying to swallow the hand or foot of the man, if they hang from the boat, floating on the surface of the water.
There have also been reported cases in which the hungry catfish tried to snatch the Whites from the hands of women washing at the river. Being so hraparet, it is no wonder that it develops at such a rapid pace.
Regarding the way it feeds, we must mention that the catfish manifests a maximum craving in March-November, especially in June and early July, in the winter months, so between December and March, eats little, "hibernates" in a deeper pit in the river, on such days it happens very rarely to start looking for food.
Features Sleep
The head of the catfish is large, rounded and flat in front, and at the back slightly flattened laterally it is covered by a relatively thin and soft skin. Both jaws, lower and Upper, are very strong, with hard bones. The mouth is extremely large, and the conical teeth, very sharp, arranged like the hairs of a brush, are slightly bent inside.
The tongue is short and thick. The eyes are particularly small and located at a relatively large distance from each other. On the head of the catfish, three pairs of whiskers are distinguished: on the upper jaw two longer, at least three times longer than the lower ones, on the lower four shorter.
These whiskers serve not only to touch, but by the wave movement similar to the frames, the catfish can attract with them small and inexperienced fish, which it swallows as soon as they have approached its mouth.
The body of the catfish, up to the dorsal fin, is cylindrical, and from this point to the laterally flattened tail, the dorsal fin is very small, while the one located below the tail is very long, soft and undifferentiated from the caudal.
The pectorals are provided with bone radii, but without spines. The caudal has a rounded profile. The body of the catfish is not covered with scales, it is protected by a thick layer of mucus, which makes the fish particularly slippery.
The color of the catfish is strongly influenced by the aquatic environment in which it lives, it can be darker or on the contrary, lighter. The back is usually clay-colored, gray-green, sometimes marbled. The sides are olive-green, also with marbling, and the belly is white or yellowish-white, sometimes tarred with blue spots or stained with smaller and larger gray-gray dots.
Flippers have a darker color. The middle of the paired flippers is crossed by a yellow stripe. The iris of the eyes is yellowish, while the pupils are surrounded by a golden stripe, during the breeding season, the sides and belly of the catfish acquire reddish shades, so the nuptial coat can be easily recognized.
Catfish can reach exceptional sizes and live to old age. This fact is also confirmed by some specimens with lengths of 4-5 m, which reach even the weight of over 300 kg. These, although extremely rare, still sometimes occur in large spills or tethers used for industrial fishing on the Danube.
The age of such huge specimens of catfish can exceed 60-80 years, and even 100 years. In the natural waters of our country, catfish reach average lengths of 0.80-1 m at a weight of 5-20 kg. But not very rare specimens of 50-60 kg. Among the Raptors in Romania, the catfish is the one that can reach the largest waist. In the early years, the pace of development of sleep is more accelerated, in the Old years it decreases, although the fish feeds just as consistently.
Large, old-age specimens devour very large amounts of food, gaining very little body weight. The fact is that under optimal conditions, such as the existence of abundant amounts of small fish, the catfish grows rapidly.
Basically, it can be found almost everywhere, except for mountain streams, it likes to stay in the deeper portions, oozing, with slow currents of rivers and lakes, especially if in that place there are roots, tree trunks or other obstacles immersed in water.
It prefers washed places with pits under river banks, deep ravines, where the gloss of the water is shaded by trees and where it can hide among the roots or among the branches of trees fallen into the water, to stay on the prowl. From such places it can be removed only in rare cases, at the approach of a storm, if it has nothing to overcome its hunger or if so dictated by instinct.
As the water level rises and the colder the weather becomes, the catfish drags further to the depths of the river or lake, on such days, large specimens of catfish can be found in the deepest pits of that area.
The catfish is a bottom fish, that is, it spends much of its life lying at the bottom of the water or under the banks of the waters, hollowed out by the current. Here he lurks his prey, from which he gets the nickname "pandaci". During the day it rarely leaves its hiding place, but at night it becomes more active, without moving away, at great distances.
In summer, the catfish sometimes rises in the upper layers of the water, at which time it can be observed with the naked eye how it hunts: the water ripples strongly and at the same moment one can see the catfish holding its prey in its mouth and then disappearing with it into the depths. On these warm days it can happen that instead of fish, catfish hunt ducklings that swim to the surface of the water.
Also, with a little luck, we can observe the moment when a larger catfish appears at the gloss of the water, shows its head and half of its body, and then, vigorously wagging its tail, describes a downward curve in the water and disappears again in the deep. Although it has a heavy body, the fish is particularly skilful in movements, during summer storms, catfish rise relatively often to the surface of the water.
The catfish live in smaller or larger groups, and the larger specimens also choose the most suitable places in the group, lurking approximately in the same area. This explains the fact that where we have caught a catfish we often manage to catch others. Professional fishermen as well as sportsmen know this aspect. Very old, "huge" specimens, however, do not constitute in jokes, but live solitary.
Reproduction Sleep
Sleep reaches sexual maturity at the age of 4-5 years. Its breeding period coincides with that of carp, that is, when the water temperature reaches values of 18-20 degrees celsius.
This period is therefore usually from May to the end of June, these days, mature specimens gather in groups and make up pairs, in case the water level is high, the catfish chooses the lands recently covered by water, where the spawning grains are deposited as shallow as possible, on the grass and on the branches of the bushes.
Depending on the body weight, a female catfish lays between 100,000 and 500,000 whitish-yellow caviar grains with a diameter of 2.5-3 mm. Spawning is preceded by a nuptial game consisting of hitting the water hard with the tail.
The meat of the catfish is tender, aromatic, devoid of bones, that of the larger specimens being quite fatty. Catfish eggs are not edible, as they contain easily toxic substances, generating diarrhea, headaches, etc.
