If you grew up in the South, you probably ate a lot of catfish. The catfish has long been an important food fish in the Southern United States. It was especially important for African slaves, which helped determine it’s place in Southern cuisine. With catfish come stories of giant catfish. Anywhere where there are fairly large or very large dams, as in the South, the Midwest, or the Southwest, you will hear about the giant catfish lurking at the bottom of the water near the dam. Growing up near Jackson, Mississippi, I heard stories about divers diving near the dam of the Ross Barnett Reservoir and seeing catfish at the bottom “as big as Volkswagens.”
These catfish, we heard, were so large they couldn’t even move. They just lay there at the bottom like lazy whales, waiting for something to swim into their mouths. I remember thinking this was a fairly bad strategy for growing so large.
The Urban Legend: “Catfish as Big as a Volkswagen”
I didn’t know it at the time, but “catfish as large as Volkswagens” was a popular urban legend, especially in rural areas. What type of Volkswagen? A Volkswagen Beetle or “Bug”, of course. They had about the right shape to bring to mind a big fat catfish. If the fish were not as big as a Volkswagen, they were at least as big as dogs, calves, etc. The giant catfish in the reservoir, according to the version I heard, just sat there doing nothing.
In other versions of the story, they were menacing, swimming around in recently submerged vehicles trying to get at the dead bodies inside, or even trying to take a bit out of the divers themselves. These catfish were so frightening that some of the divers’ hair would turn instantly white “from shock”, and they would vow to never dive in these waters again.
There are giant catfish and diver stories almost anywhere there are large dams. I always wondered why there would be so many submerged cars near a dam, but a more credible explanation as to why there would be divers in the water is that they are there to do maintenance work.
Is it possible for a catfish to grow as large as a vehicle? No. But, the many tales of “monster catfish” probably gave rise to this particular folklore. Catfish cannot grow to be as large as a Volkswagen bug, but some species can grow very large by fisherman standards.
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How Big Can Catfish Actually Get in North America?
Growing up, we routinely caught yellow cats (mudcats, flatheads) as large as 75 pounds. We caught these monsters near spillways, but they are found in all sorts of river waters.
The largest catfish caught in North America, however, exceeded 140 pounds and it was a blue cat. In fact, channel cats and blue cats can grow to enormous sizes. Some local stories even assign names to particular large catfish that the locals have been trying to catch for years, much like the Moby Dick-like fish obsession of the movie On Golden Pond.
River Monsters Across the Globe: Europe’s Wels and Asia’s Mekong Giants
In Italy, a catfish was caught that weighed over 200 pounds, essentially the size of a man. Giant catfish are found in other parts of Europe, as well, including the Ebro River in Spain, a prime fishing destination. Not all species of catfish can grow to such huge proportions, but one in particular is thought to grow to the largest size.
This species, which holds the Guinness Book of World Records’ position for the world’s largest freshwater fish, is the Mekong giant catfish, or Pangasianodon gigas, which can grow to weights from 330 to 650 lbs, and can reach lengths of almost ten feet. It is not only the largest catfish, but the world’s largest freshwater scaleless fish.
One of the largest Mekong giant catfish caught, if not the largest, was netted on May 1, 2010 in the Mekong River of northern Thailand. It was almost nine feet long and the size of a grizzly bear, weighing 646 pounds. It may not only be the largest catfish catch ever recorded, but the largest freshwater fish ever caught, period.
The Mekong giant catfish used to be found all over the river from Vietnam to Southern China. It was especially populous in the southern half of the river, in countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
Today, its populations are in decline due to over-fishing and loss of habitat from damming of tributaries and destruction of breeding and spawning grounds. The number of Mekong giant catfish has reduced by at least 95% in the last century, and the fish is close to extinction.
Wherever catfish species thrive around the globe, humans have attached supernatural lore to their bottom-dwelling habits, whiskered appearance, and uncanny ability to grow to monstrous sizes in murky waters.
The Earth-Shaking Namazu of Japan
In Japanese folklore, the giant catfish is not merely a river monster—it is a cosmic force of destruction and renewal known as the Namazu.
According to myth, the colossal Namazu dwells in the deep mud beneath the islands of Japan. The god Kashima keeps the creature pinned down with a massive sacred capstone (kaname-ishi). Whenever Kashima lets his guard down or leaves his post, the great catfish thrashes in the mud, causing catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis across the country.
During the Edo period (and especially following the devastating Ansei earthquake of 1855), popular woodblock prints called Namazu-e became widespread. While the fish was feared for its destructive tremors, it was also celebrated by the working class as a “world-rectifier” (yo-naoshi), an equalizer whose quakes destroyed the estates of corrupt, wealthy merchants and forced the redistribution of wealth to the poor.
Clan Totems and Great Lakes Indigenous Traditions
Across North America, native peoples viewed the giant catfish with deep reverence, often incorporating the fish into their spiritual and social structures.
For the Anishinaabe peoples of the Great Lakes region, including the Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa, and Potawatomi, the catfish served as a primary clan totem:
- The Catfish Clan (Maanamegwug or Maanameg): Revered as one of the original, ancestral fish clans. Members of the Fish Clan were historically recognized as the teachers, philosophers, and dispute-settlers within the community, prized for their calm, deep-thinking temperament.
- The Bullhead Catfish (Wawaazisii / Wawaazisiig): Recognized alongside the larger catfish in clan lineage and oral traditions, carrying symbols of longevity and endurance.
In Ojibwe legends, the catfish was also portrayed as a formidable protector of sacred waters, endowed with great size and physical strength to guard river bends and deep channels against malevolent water spirits (Mishipeshu).
The fascination with giant catfish clearly stretches far beyond the spillways of the deep south and comparisons to Volkswagens. Across cultures, there seems to be a deep human impulse to turn a large, reclusive creature lurking in the dark bottom of the river into something far larger than life.
The Official Catfish Record Book: Separating Myth from Fact
While no catfish has ever grown to the dimensions of a Volkswagen Beetle, official sportfishing and freshwater biology records confirm that several species reach staggering proportions:
- All-Tackle World Record & US Record (Blue Catfish): 143 lbs (64.86 kg), caught in 2011 at John H. Kerr Reservoir (Buggs Island Lake) on the Virginia/North Carolina border.
- North American Flathead Catfish Record: 123 lbs, pulled from Elk City Reservoir, Kansas, in 1998.
- European Wels Catfish (Silurus glanis): Certified catches regularly exceed 250 lbs, with river monsters topping 9 feet in length across Italy’s River Po and Spain’s Ebro River.
- World’s Largest Scaleless Freshwater Fish (Mekong Giant Catfish): The 646 lb giant netted in northern Thailand in 2005 remains the global benchmark for freshwater leviathans.
Further Reading
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