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Blind Beliefs

Geoff Maynard

It should come as no surprise to read that, until very recent times, almost everything that was ever written about catfish has since been proved to have been totally wrong. Yet still many people, among them some very good angers, persist in believing the myths.

The most common preconception was that catfish were bottom feeders. Catfish anglers must by now realise that wels are not purely fish which scavenge about the mud on the bottom of the river or lake. They are predators and will feed at any depth. This is at last becoming recognised, even though the message has taken a long while to get through and we still occasionally see some people using carp fishing tactics, baits and methods. Live baits and predator methods are now accepted to be the way forward if you want to catch. Good, so that's cleared up. But what about our other preconceptions? I mean, we all "know" that catfish are blind, don't we? They have tiny eyes, so they find their food by taste and smell and by detecting vibrations. Okay, sounds reasonable - but is it all true?

When I was a kid I used to idolize Dick Walker. He and his sidekick Fred Taylor were my heros. It always seemed to me that while Dick had a special talent for catching fish, Fred was the real winner. Fred just had to tag along with Dick and he was assured of some good fishing. All he had to do was watch what Dick did and copy him. (I'm not saying it's true, but it is what I thought as a kid). Nowadays I find myself in a similar position to how I used to think of Fred. I get to go fishing with the experts, some of their expertise rubs off and I get to catch a few more than I would otherwise have done on my own. Talking to these guys often makes me aware of my own shortcomings but just sometimes I say something which obviously makes them stop and think. That's when I start the interrogation. I want to know why, where, and what colour underpants.

Recently I went on a catfishing trip to Spain with Dr Paul Garner who is both one of the UK's leading freshwater fish ecologists and a superb angler as well. We had set the baits out and were sitting back hoping for a run, dreaming about getting a catfish on the bank etc. You know how it is when you start raving on about your favourite species. I said something dreamily about how a catfish's eye resembles a golden topaz. Paul then put his Doctors hat on and explained that this is a common feature of a lot of night predators. "Take the average domestic tom-cat for instance, shine a torch at them and their eyes reflect the light back". He went on to explain that their eyes reflect the light back towards the source to produce an image intensifying effect. This, said Paul, explained why they are so effective as night hunters, their eyes make much better use of the available light than ours do.

As he finished talking, we paused and looked at each other. The same thoughts were going through our heads, pieces of a puzzle starting to click into place. A myth was crumbling. Have you ever seen a catfish's eyes at night? They reflect the light back at you. If Paul's theories are correct then the eyes of a catfish have built in image intensifiers! Yet all over Europe, anglers are believing that they are blind! The eyes of a catfish are tiny in relation to the rest of their body - but they are no smaller than those of the average roach, and nobody would claim that a roach is blind. We have been believing these myths for too long. Time for another catfish re-think perhaps?

As yet there are have been no real studies into how the eyes of a catfish work. Until we have some scientific proof, perhaps we should stop our generalisations and start thinking along the lines that a catfish may have very good eyes indeed.