All wet

In my younger days, I loved fish and fishing, and not just fishing in Idaho's wonderful waters, but keeping them in aquariums as well. From 1973 to 1977, I owned and operated an aquarium shop, where the 75+ aquariums and a pond held the mundane to the exotic; from guppies, goldfish and the lovely and delicate neon tetra, to saltwater fish, arawanas, and the massive arapaima gigas (one of the largest freshwater fishes in the world); my arawana and arapaima shared a 250 gallon home-made tank with an immense black pacu, plecostomus, and amazon catfish. the arawana ate goldfish, but the arapaima ate just about anything; goldfish, koi, dead rats... it was about 30" long when it died, seemed to have choked on a overly large goldfish. I sold the aquarium shop not long after that.

anyway, I've not thought about that for a long time, but I had told my son as a child about the arapaima, and I don't think he really believed me. Last week excitedly on the phone he told me about seeing one at the National Zoo; an eight foot long one!



The picture my son took on his cell phone, while not bad, doesn't quite capture the "scale" of the arapaima.

so I found this picture... it does.



See why I had a desire to go fishing for one of these? But I never did. A whole new line of fishing opened up while I was fishing instead.