CATFISH, any of the fishes of the family Siluricke. This large family is characterized by having the body naked or covered with bony plates, but without true scales. About the mouth there are two or more barbels, the longest of which are at the corners of the mouth. There is usually a stout, generally ser rated, spine in front of the dorsal fin, and often another in front of each pectoral fin. These spines are likely to inflict considerable injury on the careless fisherman. There is what seems to be a poison-gland connected with the pec toral spine of some of the smaller species, and wounds are very painful. This is one of the most widely distributed families of fishes, and is especially abundant in South America and Africa. Most of them live in fresh waters. There are estimated to be about 1,000 species.
The catfish are sluggish in their movements, securing their prey rather by stratagem than by swiftness. They are bottom-feeders and indis criminate, so that although, on account of their size and abundance, they constitute an import ant element in the fish food of the countries they inhabit, their flesh is not considered of high quality in taste. North and middle Amer ica contain 100 or more species, of which a third, perhaps, are to be found in the United States and Mexico. The majority are not of much importance, but some ate of great local value. At the head of the commercial list stands the channel cats of the genus /ctalutids, which are found throughout the Mississippi Valley and Gulf States, and are caught in Nast quantities not only for home use, but for ex port, as much as 2,000,000 pounds annually being dressed, packed in ice and shipped from Morgan City, La., the central mart of the Atcha falaya River fisheries, which are in operation from September to May. The method of cap ture is by utrot-lines)) from a few yards to a mile long. The catfish move with the season's temperature of the water, going down stream in winter and up in summer. At the season of the spring floods they are carried over the swamps and adjacent lands, and thousands are caught by the shorter Thrush)) lines. There is
a regular collecting service of tugs. The Louisiana species most taken is the chuckle head (I. furcatus), which loves sluggish waters. A more northerly species, ordinarily 20 to 25 pounds in weight, is the ((blue) or channel cat (I. punctatus), which thrives in the colder, swifter waters of the Tennessee, Cumberland and neighboring rivers, whose flesh is declared equsl to that of the black bass. Both these have been acclimated in California. The largest of the American species is the great fork-tailed Mississippi cat (L lacustris), which inhabits all the lakes and big rivers from the Saskatchewan and Great Lakes to Florida and Texas, and reaches a weight of 150 pounds or more. The so-called Potomac River cat (A. cat us) is the one most familiar in the east, since it abounds from the Delaware River to Texas, but is most common in the waters of Chesapeake Bay and southward to Florida. It is next in commercial value to the Great Lakes fish. It has a very wide head and large mouth, but seldom exceeds two feet in length. The smaller yellow cat (A. tiatalis) and other species of this genus are numerous in the in terior, but not of great importance. (See BULLHEAD). The mud cat or goujon (Leptope olivaris) is a slender pike-like fish with a very large, wide head and mouth, and thick skin, which lives in the sluggish rivers of the South ern States. It is sometimes five feet long and 100 pounds in weight, but is most repulsive in appearance; its flesh, however, is excellent, and is often sold, dressed, for that of the favorite western channel cat. Other genera and species go by such names as horned pouts, mud-cats, stone-cats, mad toms, etc., and will be found elsewhere described, as well as many ,for eign species of interest and value.
Consult, besides general works, Jordan and Evermann, 'Food and Game Fishes of Amer ica,' and the publications of the United States Fish Commission.