Freshwater Catfish

A slow-moving, nest-building bottom feeder of lakes and sluggish rivers that eats yabbies, shrimp, insects and snails. Its fin spines are venomous. It is protected in the Murray–Darling in New South Wales (outside a list of dams), in South Australia, and in Victoria outside the Wimmera Basin. It can be taken under size and possession limits in Queensland, and is relatively common in New South Wales coastal catchments from the Hunter north. It is caught on bait. Fly is not an established way to catch it.

Fishes of Australia gives two natural ranges. One is coastal: from the Pioneer River at Mackay in Queensland south to the Clarence River in northern New South Wales, with lakes and streams on K’gari (Fraser Island) and North Stradbroke Island. The other is inland, through much of the Murray–Darling Basin except the slopes and upper reaches of the southern basin. The fish has also been moved well beyond both: into the New South Wales coastal catchments between the Great Lakes and the Shoalhaven, and into several Victorian river basins including the Glenelg, Werribee, Latrobe and Yarra.

NSW DPIRD says catfish remain relatively common in parts of the Macquarie, Namoi, Gwydir and Border Rivers catchments and in coastal catchments north of Newcastle. In Victoria, the Victorian Fisheries Authority says the Wimmera Angling Association introduced the species to the Wimmera River below Horsham in the 1970s, and that it is now abundant and widespread down to Jeparit.

In this guide, Lake Burley Griffin has stocking records for the species from 1978 to 1995. It has been recorded in the Mitta Mitta River in 1977 and at Dunns Swamp in 1999. These are records, not fisheries, and the Mitta Mitta is in Victoria, where taking one is prohibited.

Fishes of Australia describes a fish of many habitats: large lowland rivers down to the tidal limit, small upland streams, rocky fast water, shallow lagoons, lakes and dams. Native Fish Australia puts it in lakes and sluggish, turbid streams with fringing vegetation, living and feeding largely on the bottom, solitary as an adult, with small fish often in loose schools.

It does not travel. The Victorian Fisheries Authority says mature fish usually move less than five kilometres, which is why it warns that heavy fishing, pollution or damage to nesting areas can greatly affect a local population. It feeds on whatever the bottom offers: Fishes of Australia lists aquatic insects, yabbies, prawns, small crustaceans, molluscs and some small fish. The authority gives crustaceans as the most important item. It grows to 90 centimetres and 6.8 kilograms, but the same source says fish over two kilograms are uncommon.

The tail gives it its name and its lookalike. A longfin eel or shortfin eel also has a long fin running round the tail, but an eel has no whiskers and no spined fin on its back. A catfish has four pairs of barbels around the mouth and a short, high first dorsal fin with a stout serrated spine, as Fishes of Australia describes.

Queensland’s limits table lists several other freshwater catfish, including the black catfish, Hyrtl’s tandan and Cooper Creek catfish, under a combined possession limit with this one. In Queensland, check which catfish you have before you keep it.

Assume it may be protected until you know otherwise. Inland of the Great Dividing Range, in most Victorian water and anywhere in South Australia, it must go back.

Where the rules allow it, catfish are caught on bait. Native Fish Australia says shrimp and scrubworms are “the go”, and warns that a hooked catfish is quick to bust off in snags. There is no established fly method for the species. The diet, bottom-dwelling crustaceans and insects, suggests that a weighted shrimp or yabby imitation crawled slowly along the bottom, something like a scud or shrimp pattern, is the obvious thing to try; treat it as an experiment. See scuds and freshwater shrimp for the food it is copying.

The male builds the nest. Fishes of Australia describes a circular nest of gravel and pebbles with a central depression, into which the female lays large, non-adhesive eggs; the larvae hatch after about seven days, and a fish can spawn more than once in a season. The Victorian Fisheries Authority gives water temperatures between 20 and 24°C as the main trigger, says the male fans, cleans and guards the nest for up to two weeks, and notes that if falling water exposes a nest he builds another, and that repeated abandonment means no spawning at all. Fluctuating river levels are therefore a direct threat to breeding. A catfish guarding gravel in spring and summer is on a nest; leave it.

Yes. Tandanus tandanus goes by both names; NSW DPIRD uses them interchangeably.

No. In New South Wales the Murray–Darling population is endangered and closed outside the listed dams, Victoria prohibits taking it outside the Wimmera, and South Australia protects it fully.

NSW DPIRD names carp, thermal pollution and reversed seasonal flows. Fishes of Australia adds habitat damage, barriers to movement, and competition and predation from carp and redfin. A fish that nests in shallow gravel and barely moves feels each of those.