Recently, the temperature has risen, the activity of fish in the rivers has risen, and many anglers have "burst protection" and even catch rare big fish.
For example, the following Guangdong angler, when fishing at night in the Pearl River, caught two black "spotted catfish"...
These two "big catfish" have seventy or eighty centimeters, adding up to more than ten pounds, and have a strange appearance, and the fish is scattered with many black spots.
Some people look at it and exclaim that these are two "freshwater fish kings" - sesame swords, which are unique fish species of the Pearl River water system with the scientific name of the spotted turtle, named after the black spots of sesame seeds, which are now very rare.
<h1>Is this a sesame sword? </h1>
In fact, this is an exotic "catfish" - spotted forktail catfish, commonly known as ditch catfish, pincerfish, forktail fish, etc., is a catfish genus under the catfish order.
Spotted forktail catfish is native to Southeast Asia, because of its rapid growth and strong adaptability, it has been introduced into China's aquaculture, and has a large breeding industry in Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou and other places.
As mentioned above, the forktail fish grow rapidly and are very adaptable, so the forktail catfish that escape from the surface of the aquaculture water to the natural rivers can survive and even begin to multiply.
Therefore, like in the Pearl River, there may now be a stable population of fork-tailed catfish - from the Guangdong angler who fished two adult fork-tailed catfish in the Pearl River in a row, it can be seen...
——Forktail catfish is indeed somewhat similar to the local sesame sword, but because of the difference in meat quality, the price difference between the two is tens of yuan.
Therefore, some "black-hearted merchants" in Sichuan and Yunnan will use fork-tailed catfish to impersonate sesame swords, and friends who do not understand aquatic knowledge are likely to be difficult to distinguish and thus deceived.
<h1>How to distinguish between a fork-tailed catfish and a sesame sword? </h1>
Experienced fishing enthusiasts should still be able to easily distinguish between sesame swords and forktail catfish, but for ordinary people, the nuances of forktail catfish and sesame swords in body color and body shape may not be easy to identify.
——Changjiang Jun: In fact, from the "fish whiskers" is best identified, the fork-tailed catfish has thick black whiskers at the corner of the mouth, and the sesame sword is a long and a short pair of slender fish whiskers, with its convex eyeballs, quite a bit of "rat head rat eyes" feeling, and the spots on the sesame sword are more meter-level.....
Of course, although the meat quality of the forktail catfish is not as good as the "freshwater famous fish" such as sesame sword, it is also very tender and delicious, and there are no fine thorns, so it is also a good choice for making grilled fish and sauerkraut fish.
From this point of view, as an alien species, the fork-tailed catfish has not attracted so many insults as exotic species such as scavengers, alligator eels, and tilapia.....
The spread is fast
However, as a "broad temperature fish species", the forktail catfish can adapt to a large temperature range, so with the development of its aquaculture industry, the forktail catfish spread rapidly in the natural waters of inland areas.
For example, after the flood this year, there have been many schools of forktail fish in the rivers of Hubei, Jiangxi and Sichuan.
Once these large schools of forktail fish that escape from farming survive in the major river systems in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, perhaps in the next few years, the number of "wild" forktail catfish will increase significantly, and its ecological impact cannot be underestimated, after all, it is also an exotic species.
Netizens, do you have this kind of fish in your local area?