Gray Eel Catfish

	Scientific Name	Plotosus canius
	Other Names	Pla Duk Talay
	World Record	8.50 kg / Lek Sungwichien , Thailand

Description

Eel-tailed catfish have a distinctive eel-like tail, scale less skin and touch-sensitive 'whiskers' around their fleshy mouth. They use their whiskers to locate food organisms. The whiskers have no stinging ability. Their dorsal and pectoral fins have strong venomous spines. Eel-tailed catfish vary in color. Adult fish are usually brownish-green mottled with yellow, brown and darker green, and have a whitish belly. Fish less than 30cm are usually mottled grey.

Habitat

Eel-tailed catfish are freshwater, bottom-dwelling fish. They can be found on the bottoms of freshwater lakes and in slow-moving rivers and streams. They feed and live on the bottom, preferring deeper water or cover of undercut banks, weedbeds and snags by day, but move into shoreline shallows at night.

Feeding Habit

Eel-tail catfish feed on shrimps, crayfish, aquatic insects small fish and small mussels. They hunt from snagy positions or right into the shallows at night. They can also be seen and heard at night chomping at the bank side vegetation grubbing for worms and small grubs.

Age and Growth

Eel catfish are slow growing catfish and tend to be on of the smallest of the catfish family that anglers tend to target. These fish spawn in the summer months where the females move into shallow heavily weed areas who are quickly followed by the males that tend to be of a smaller size.

Tackle and Methods

As with all catfish pound for pound these catfish tend to fight really hard. It is therefore important to make sure that our complete set up will be ready to be put to the ultimate test. Rods should be 10 to 20Lb class coupled with a good either fixed spool or multiplier reel and 10 to 15lb line or braid. Tactics is normally fishing with cuts of fresh fish hard on the bottom in or around snagy areas. At night it is best to try the shallow areas with any under cut bankside vegetation.

Related Species

Listed below are similar related species that customers have searched.

	White Catfish		Channel Catfish
	Wells Catfish		Chao Phraya Catfis
	Mekong Catfish		Blue Catfish
	Flathead Catfish

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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