YouTube / Outside Online
I’ve just added ‘fishing for Tiger Fish in Botswana during the annual catfish migration’ to my ultimate fishing bucket list after seeing this footage below. You might’ve seen Tiger Fish before on Nat Geo or another one of those channels.
Tiger Fish are world famous for having razor-sharp teeth which protrude from their mouths in the gnarliest of ways. This is one of those species of fish (like a barracuda) that you look at it and think ‘holy shit, that fish could take my hand off if it wanted to’. They are a highly sought after game fish in parts of Africa and the peak time to catch them is during the annual catfish migration. During this time, huge schools of catfish pool up and are corralled by the ravenous Tiger Fish. Fishermen can stalk them by spotting certain types of birds which follow the massive schools of catfish up and down the Okavango Delta in Botswana.
I can’t even fathom what fly fishing for Tiger Fish must be like. That strike is one of the most violent things I’ve ever seen. Fly fishing for tarpon, for me, is the apex of fly fishing. But tarpon lurch before they start jumping. They aren’t batshit crazy and violent like these Tiger Fish. That has to be one of the wildest fishing experiences imaginable, and an excellent reason to start planning a trip to Botswana.
Happy Handgrenade Productions, the team behind the Dogs of War movie, put together that clip above. So if you want to check out more clips like this you can follow either of those links and go ‘like’ them on Facebook for more. Or you can check out the Outside Online YouTube channel where that video above was shared from.