One Cool Cat
Brown Bullhead Catfish (Ameiurus nebulosus) - Suburban New Jersey, 25 miles west of "The City" (NYC)
My father was an avid fisherman all his life, and the year before he died my brother and I brought him to Lake Nomahegan, set up some lawn chairs and sat down for a relaxed Sunday afternoon of fishing.
As usual my father caught the biggest fish and we put it in the spackle bucket we brought along for "keepers". As it turned out his catfish was the only "keeper" that day, and since we didn't have enough fish to feed any of our families, I brought this guy home and released it in my pond. Later that year after my father died I made a pet out of his last lunker and I named him “Walter” after my father. I would have called it “Shorty” since most of my dad's close friends called him Shorty (he was bigger than life, but a mere 5 foot 3 in stature), but since his fish was a nice sized Cat over 12 inches in length "Shorty" seemed out of the question.
I used to supplement my pond resident's natural diet of bugs, aquatic plants, and smaller fish with store bought fish food, but TetraMin tropical fish flakes were quite expensive and the large 12 oz. cans didn’t even last a week, so I figured that cats eat fish (not to mention that Walter was a "cat" fish), so I decided to feed him (and the rest of the residents (mostly goldfish, sunnies, perch, shiners, and a couple of coy) dry cat food. However, to make it easier for them to eat the hard dried food I soaked the half inch pellets in water for 20 minutes so even the newly hatched fish fry could get their share of the bounty, though when Walter opened his 4 inch mouth he sucked it down by the handful!
Note: The life expectancy of a Brown Bullhead is 6 - 8 years at which point they're usually about 12 inches and a little over a pound. Walter was that size when my father caught him 10 years ago, so I'd guess that he's well over a hundred years old by now in catfish years!
One Cool Cat
Brown Bullhead Catfish (Ameiurus nebulosus) - Suburban New Jersey, 25 miles west of "The City" (NYC)
My father was an avid fisherman all his life, and the year before he died my brother and I brought him to Lake Nomahegan, set up some lawn chairs and sat down for a relaxed Sunday afternoon of fishing.
As usual my father caught the biggest fish and we put it in the spackle bucket we brought along for "keepers". As it turned out his catfish was the only "keeper" that day, and since we didn't have enough fish to feed any of our families, I brought this guy home and released it in my pond. Later that year after my father died I made a pet out of his last lunker and I named him “Walter” after my father. I would have called it “Shorty” since most of my dad's close friends called him Shorty (he was bigger than life, but a mere 5 foot 3 in stature), but since his fish was a nice sized Cat over 12 inches in length "Shorty" seemed out of the question.
I used to supplement my pond resident's natural diet of bugs, aquatic plants, and smaller fish with store bought fish food, but TetraMin tropical fish flakes were quite expensive and the large 12 oz. cans didn’t even last a week, so I figured that cats eat fish (not to mention that Walter was a "cat" fish), so I decided to feed him (and the rest of the residents (mostly goldfish, sunnies, perch, shiners, and a couple of coy) dry cat food. However, to make it easier for them to eat the hard dried food I soaked the half inch pellets in water for 20 minutes so even the newly hatched fish fry could get their share of the bounty, though when Walter opened his 4 inch mouth he sucked it down by the handful!
Note: The life expectancy of a Brown Bullhead is 6 - 8 years at which point they're usually about 12 inches and a little over a pound. Walter was that size when my father caught him 10 years ago, so I'd guess that he's well over a hundred years old by now in catfish years!