What would happen if i were to release some Wels catfish in a local pond (southern US) for noodling? The pond isnt usually connected to a large river or something (though sometimes it floods)
>>5106236jail
>>5106237why
>>5106239crime
>>5106246why is it a crime? What harm could a catfish do? We already have huge catfish here in the USlike channel cats
>>5106247>what harm could asian carp do>what harm could northern snakeheads do
Why not noodle for snapping turtles like a normal Southerner?
>>5106248Not OP but what could a catfish like that do that a regular American catfish cant do? Specifically, how could it get out of control?
>>5106236There's much more competition in American waters and they wouldn't get near as big and prevalent as they do in western Youreup. Especially in places with blue cats.
>>5106236nothing really, flatheads and blues get to a similar size, its not a big deal
>>5106236they only grow this big in areas where they´re invasive or introduced like in Spain where they have no predators and the warm water allows them to grow to enormous sizes
>>5106236Your first obstacle is that they're federally banned and I doubt you're going to spend a thousand dollars for the legal slightly smaller Chinese species.
>>5106332>flatheads and blues get to a similar sizeWels are twice the size of those
>>5106254>what could a catfish like that do that a regular American catfish cant doIt would eat all the regular American catfish
>>5106353sounds like it's a true american at heart then
>>5106335>tfw the giant resident evil 4 fish is real
>>5106248Nothing. You can't find a single harmful thing they did that isn't selective hysteria to justify more government funding.
>>5106248There's actual scientific literature on how Wels catfish would be a net add to the great lakes without harming the ecosystem. Can't imagine a high bioload southern system would be harmed more.
Would a Mekong delta catfish be more dangerous as an invasive species than a Wels? They get bigger, right?And why are Wels so prone to being invasive, what sets them apart from regular catfish?
>>5106237>>5106239>>5106246KEK
>>5106462Giant Mekong Catfish are algae eaters and aren't near as adaptable
>>5106353Fully grown adults are very unlikely to eat each other and a big flathead or blue would be just as likely to eat a juvenile Wels as the inverse.They're also less likely to get that big when crappie and sunfish are around to eat the eggs and fry and bass are around to eat the yearlings.
>>5106477Wels are unique in that they guard their nests, the males in particular. This is actually a pretty big deal for their success.
>>5106478So do blues and flatheads, I think all catfish do. That's how noodling works, you're sticking your hand in their nests and you drag them out when they bite.
>>5106352>3m catfishexceptions do not make the rule
>>5106236They should have got fishermen in to do all the forced perspective scenes in LOTR
>>5106379Let's see it.
>>5106379>>5106519Probably something about how they'd eat all the gobies
>>5106352It's all tall tales and there's nothing verified, but there's divers who have refused to dive back down to the bottoms of some of these dams in southern reservoirs because they've seen blue and flathead catfish bigger than they are.
>>5106519>Silurus glanis has the potential for high beneficial impact if introduced to the Great Lakes.>Silurus glanis has an economic importance in commercial and recreational fisheries as well as in aquaculture. Its aquaculture production has increased from 600 tonnes in 1993 to 2,000 tonnes in 2002 in ten European countries (Linhart et al. 2002; Copp et al. 2009). Fast and efficient growth, ease of breeding and rearing, and recent genome manipulation makes S. glanis ideal for commercial aquaculture (Copp et al. 2009; Cucherousset et al. 2018). Silurus glanis is considered a delicacy in some countries (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania), where it is exploited for its flesh (tender white meat), skin (for leather and glue production), and eggs (for caviar) (Copp et al. 2009). The flesh of S. glanis is highly nutritious in regard to fatty acid composition (Saliu et al. 2017; Linhartova et al. 2018) and protein quality (Pyz-Lukasik and Paszkiewicz 2018).The popularity of S. glanis relates to the large sizes they can reach; they are perceived as an attractive big-game species by many United Kingdom anglers (Hickley and Chare 2004). They are also a prized pet species, with specimens in the United States advertised for thousands of dollars.>The broad diet of S. glanis extends to species considered invasive to the Great Lakes, including Sea Lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) (Boulêtreau et al. 2020), Rudd (Scardinius erythrophthalmus), Tubenose (Proterorhinus semilunaris), Round (Neogobius melanostomus) and Monkey Goby (Neogobius fluviatilis), and Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) (Didenko et al. 2016; Mikl et al. 2017). They also consume European Perch (Perca fluviatilis) eggs, which were originally thought to be unpalatable to fish (Vejrik et al. 2017b).
>>5106595>muh economic benefitMinor at best but more likely entirely inconsequential>they eat duh invasive speciesAll of which are well adapted to living alongside high predation pressures or else they wouldn’t be invasive in the first place. Most of those species co occur with wels catfish without any issues
I'd introduce them just because i want to fish them>but its bad for the environment!i dont care
>>5106595>Silurus glanis has an economic importance in commercial and recreational fisheriesI live in the species' invasive range and I can guarantee with absolute certainty that it's a completely worthless pest species with zero economic relevance. Perhaps it has its uses in second world slav countries but wherever good fish is available to the average consumer wels catfish is not seen as food.>The broad diet of S. glanis extends to species considered invasiveIt also extends to native species. Also there has never been a case in the history of the planet where the introduction of an exotic species resulted in the natural disappearence of other exotics.
>>5106599>>5106601Why so mad, don't shoot the messenger. That was copypasted straight from the USGS website.
>>5106603I'm not criticizing you, I'm criticizing the material.
>>5106605ok either way you dont have to worry because they're on the lacey act and nobody is going to smuggle catfish across the border
>>5106236Do i have just good memory or im just too autistic and im able to remember the EXACT SAME THREAD WORD FOR WORD COPIED AND PASTED. Seriously? Again with the dammed catfish release thing? Again! Get new material.
>>5106247>We already have huge catfish here in the USlike channel catsThen use those instead, Einstein
>>5106236It would be extremely painful
>>5106332>>5106502On average they are much larger than the species found in the US, the 2 meters ones are not rare at all. Its also a very common fish, you will find it in every single body of water and they grow fast because they have no predators and eat everything.
>>5106778okay, and? theyre moving into a place with tons of predators, you understand that an individual needs to SURVIVE to get to gargantuan sizes, again, its a nothing burger
Invasive species spreading is inevitable and irreversible so there's no point in trying to delay it
>>5106800It's evitable and reversible
>>5106479How do you noodle without FAFOing a snapping turtle
>>5106835You're right. We just need to spray glyphosate one more time and we'll finally eradicate all the honeysuckle and bittersweet and autumn olive across all the completely uninhabited wilderness where nobody has ever stepped foot.
>>5106800Invasive freshwater aquatic species are, in fact, the one category that's easy to prevent.
>>5106835evitable if you extinguish the species to invade, reversible if you extinguish everything in the ecosystem they invaded
>>5107317different waters, different burrows, its when you get to river banks it becomes a bit dicey, but you generally stick a stick in there to find out first, and not like catfish are safe either, they can take a finger
