Tigerfish
name: Tigerfish
other names: N/A
Tiger Fish are related to the South American Piranha and just one look at their vicious teeth, leaves you in no doubt that they are savage predators. For sheer sport on light tackle a Tiger takes a lot of beating. Not only is the tiger a beautiful fish, but its ferocious elegance will get any angler's adrenaline going, few fish have such a fierce fighting energy.
Found mainly in Africa, these fish have found their way naturally into most river and lake systems. Tigers are like most predator fish in that they like to use snags and bank side cover to provide the advantage of surprise on there un expecting prey. For a predatory fish tigers have a fairly low tolerance to poor water conditions, so by the presence gives a good indication of good clean conditions.
Tiger fish are ferocious feeders and will prey on any thing that is smaller than themselves, but their diet mainly consists of fish. As these fish have an impressive set of teeth when hunting their main primary aim is to inflict a fatal wound on their pray which sometimes can equal their own size. The teeth are covered in a anticoagulant slime to prevent any such wounds from healing. Tigers will keep attacking larger pray until they die. Smaller pray is quite often bitten in half on the initial strike with the Tiger turning to eat the remaining parts. In all this is a very successful hunter.
Not a llot is know about the life cycle of the mighty Tiger fish. They have been know to grow up to 30" and it is also believed that these fish can live to a grand age. What is noticeable while catching Tigers of all sizes, you get fish in different condition states from the same stretch of water, which indicates younger fitter fish coming through while the older ones start to slip back in size and condition.
As the Tiger fish doesn't grow in to massive proportions these become great sport on light balanced tackle. Fishing is normally conducted by trolling with fish strips, small lures or the ever increasing popular fly fishing. For lures Tigers will ready take brightly colored ones that either work on the surface or right down to the bottom. For fly fishing again brightly colored patterns. One key area we have noticed is that but using single hooks the hook rate on Tigers greatly improves. Although Tigers will attack and eat prey the same size as themselves, it is generally better to use small lures / fly's. As there is nothing more frustrating in getting loads of hits but no hook ups, as the Tiger continually hits the middle of your lure where there are no hooks.
