Great Catfish

Overview

The great catfish is the giant of the Serath: a whiskered, scaleless fish of the deep slow water that grows longer than a barge pole. Most are smaller and harmless; the largest take ducks, dogs, and, bargemen say, once a child off a landing. A landed one feeds a whole quay for a day.

Appearance

A great catfish has a broad, flattened head, a wide mouth that could take in a Human's head, and six long whiskers, two long ones above the mouth and four short ones below. Its body is long and tapering, flattened towards the tail, with a long fin running under it. Its skin has no scales and is slimy, mottled dark olive and grey-black above, pale and blotched below. Its eyes are tiny. The biggest are as long as two Humans laid end to end, though most landed are half that.

It moves slowly, with a sideways sweep of its long tail, and rolls at the surface at dusk with a heavy swirl that bargemen know. It smells of the bottom mud it lives in, and so does its flesh unless it is kept in clean water first.

Habitat and Range

Great catfish live in the deep, slow reaches of the Lower Serath: the scour holes below quays and weirs, the deep bends, the oxbow lakes and backwaters of the flood-ground, and the stretches above the Lying Shoals. Smaller ones live in the lower rivers of the Confluence Basins. They are few, and the largest are counted by the reach.

Behaviour and Temperament

A great catfish lies on the bottom by day under a sunken tree or in a deep hole and hunts at night, feeling for prey with its whiskers: fish, frogs, crayfish, water birds, rats, and carrion. The biggest take ducks and geese from the surface, and a swimming dog. It lives alone in one hole for years.

Life Cycle

Catfish spawn in early summer in the shallows among roots, and the male guards the eggs. They grow slowly and live very long; bargemen say a great catfish in a famous hole is the same one their grandfathers knew, and they may be right.

Uses and Dangers

They give a great deal of oily white flesh, smoked or eaten fresh, and their skin makes a tough leather. Corridor fishers take them on lines baited with a whole bird. The danger is small but real: the largest have drowned dogs and swimmers, and children are kept off the landings at dusk.

Lore and Belief

Bargemen tell of the catfish that took a child off a landing and of one so large it overturned a ferry, and every reach claims its own famous fish with a name. Reedfolk say the great catfish keep the deep holes, and a hole whose fish has gone is a hole the river is about to fill. Some corridor folk call them the river god's dogs, which Serovan the River-King's priests do not.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Animals