By Rae Alberts
Correspondent
Despite its relatively small size, Lake Monticello boasts one of the more diverse fishing spots in central Virginia. You can find small fish such as bluegill, crappie, and fallfish, three kinds of bass–smallmouth, largemouth, and rock–as well as sunfish, musky, and two different kinds of catfish–channel and flathead.
Catfish are one of the most diverse species of vertebrates in the world, with nearly 3,000 species across the globe. In fact, the only continent that doesn’t have catfish is Antarctica! Many species of catfish can grow to enormous sizes, with some records showing that certain species can grow to hundreds of pounds.
The channel catfish, here in our lake, is typically around 22 inches to two feet in length, but they can grow to be much bigger, with the biggest reported size a whopping 52 inches long–that’s over four feet! Not bad for our little lake. But the other cat in our lake, the flathead catfish, has it beat–the flathead is the second-largest freshwater catfish in North America, and can grow to 61 inches, or over five feet in length! There have been reports of flatheads weighing over 120 pounds. Now that’s a lot of fish!
Only the blue catfish, native to the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri river basins, grows bigger than the flathead in North America. The blue cat has long been a favorite for anglers, as it puts up a fierce fight. The record blue was a huge 143 pounds, and was actually caught in Kerr Lake, Virginia!
However, even the blue can’t compete with the largest catfish in the world–that title belongs to the behemoth species known as the lau-lau, or piraiba. The lau-lau is the largest catfish species on the IGFA record books, and can be found in the warm waters of the Amazon and Orinoco River basins, as far south as Argentina. They have earned a reputation as ‘man-eaters’ for their ferocious hunting behaviors. These aggressive predators feed primarily on fish, but the stomach contents of harvested lau-lau have been said to include parts of monkeys and other mammals. The largest lau-lau recorded was an incredible 341 pounds, 11 ounces, caught in Rio Solimoes, Brazil–but there are people that claim the fish can get even bigger, into the 400 or 500 pound range.
If you think you’ve got what it takes to take down a monster catfish, try your hand in Lake Monticello for a nice channel or flathead–but don’t expect a man-eater to drag you under.
