21 Of The Freakiest Fish Caught On “River Monsters”
All of these were caught by Jeremy Wade, the silver-fox madman who hosts River Monsterson Animal Planet. And, yes, he releases everything he catches.
1
A 7-feet-long, 111-pound alligator gar caught in the Trinity River in Texas.
2.
A 150-pound arapaima was caught in the Rio Maderia floodplain lake in Brazil.
3.
A massive bull shark caught in southern Africa’s Zambezi River.
4.
An electric eel found in the Amazon River, which can grow up to eight feet long and weigh up to 44 pounds.
5.
A freshwater sawfish, which can grow to 20 feet and over 400 pounds.
6.
A giant Siamese carp, or giant barb, caught in the Mekong river. Only a fraction of its adult size, this fish is capable of growing to 10 feet and 660 pounds, making it one of the largest species of freshwater fish on the planet.
7.
A giant freshwater stingray. At roughly 400 pounds, this is the largest river fish Jeremy Wade has ever captured.
8.
A goliath tigerfish, a giant-sized relative of the piranha, found in the Congo River in the heart of central Africa.
9.
A 161-pound goonch catfish, caught in a river in northern India. This catch measured 5 feet, 7 inches from head to tail with a 41-inch girth and 44-inch “wingspan.”
10.
An African lungfish. The largest specimens can reach about 6.6 feet in length.
11.
A small Vundu catfish. This fish is capable of reaching over 5 feet in length, and its maximum known weight is 121 pounds.
12.
A New Zealand longfin eel, which can reach up to 5 feet in legth.
13.
A Nile perch. This species can grow to 6 feet in length and weigh over 500 pounds.
14.
A 1-pound black piranha, the largest of the roughly 40-known piranha species.
15.
A Cuiu-Cuiu, a prehistoric-looking catfish found in the Orinoco and surrounding rivers of the Amazon. The Cuiu-Cuiu can grow to 3 feet in length and weigh over 40 pounds. It has scutes along the back half of its body that give support to the tail fin; these give the Cuiu-Cuiu an armored appearance, common in ancient fish.
16.
The red-bellied pacu is related to the flesh-eating piranha, but unlike its notorious cousin it feeds mainly on insects and vegetation. It uses its large, humanlike choppers as a tool for cracking open rubber tree nuts, crushing seeds and chopping up sea herbs and various other food sources.
17.
A short-tailed river stingray. This fish typically grows to 4.9 feet in diameter and over 450 pounds in weight.
18.
A wels catfish weighing 163 pounds and measuring 7 feet, 4 inches from head to tail. The largest wels can reach up to 10 feet and weigh over 330 pounds.
19.
A white sturgeon, the largest and most primitive freshwater fish in North America. The biggest white sturgeon on record stretched more than 20 feet in length and weighed almost 1,800 pounds.
20.
A Japanese giant salamander, the second largest salamander in the world, after the Chinese giant salamander. It grows to around five feet in length. (Not a fish, granted, but still freaky)
21.
A close relative of the piranha, the payara is often called the “vampire fish” because of its long fangs, which can grow to 6 inches in length. This little-known but frightening-looking fish is found in the Orinoco River in Venezuela.
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