Big channel cat dissection.

[henrybud]

This big female came out of the Genessee River last night on a nightcrawler. As part of our ongoing classroom experimentation, my fifth graders asked, "What do catfish eat?" This question is awesome and also an undeniable excuse (that even my wife cannot deny) to fish. Rochester's Genessee River is host to awesome fishing opportunity. In the past days, in lieu of trolling, I have been working toward the elusive GARBAGE GRAND SLAM. Suckers, carp, catfish, sheephead and......clam? Yes, we dissected the clam and a catfish.

So, back to my awesome students. We watched a dissection by a Perdue scientist to learn a catfish's anatomy on YouTube. The kids were most interested in stomach content and swim bladder. It was a hit with only one near-fainter. Take a kid fishing. Tight lines. Larry

[Chas0218]

So....what do they eat? You can't leave us all hanging!

[Xxx]

My wife is a school teacher also and every year the do a dissection of trout. Every year there are 3 different hatcheries that donate 5 trout each they want to know what's going on inside there fish also, usually the trout are fine and the kids do a great job (5thgraders) but this year they found a white in color, odd looking spots on the stomaches of the trout from 1 of the 3 hatcheries. The kids dissected the stomaches and put the spots under a microscope, they then learned it was a stomach parasite that can be contagious to the rest of the fish and if not treated can cause growth problems and eventually death. They contacted the hatchery with their results and he was glad they found this, it can be cured by adding some sort of "medication" LOL. To the water. The hatchery owner was glad the kids did this and found what could have been a real issue. In return of their findings, the hatchery owner also has a fish & pay lake he invited my wife's entire science class to fish his lake for free with a 3 fish per student limit, they were jumping for joy, most of the class went and it was a great day!! What he lost in fish to the kids was nothing compared to what he could of lost had this parasite gone unnoticed.

[gokudl3]

You mean a trout is not getting eating? That's preposterous!

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