Underwater fishing :: Burbot

The single freshwater gadoid fish is a burbot. There are very many burbots in the south and north reservoirs of Russia, but the hunters catch them seldom. The burbot is a night predator same as a cat-fish but it is less in size, that is why it can better hide from its enemies. The fish gets in the burrows, holes, which are formed between the rhizomes of the bushes and coarse water plants, under stones and logs to hide.

   Last times Russian people caught the burbots by hands. They went in the shallows, turned stones away and caught the burbots hidden there. Such fishing method visually shows behavior of this fish.

   In the dark underwater burrow my friend saw a tail of a cat-fish and after he had estimated where its body should be he shot. No one was moving and a haze was not coming from the burrow, as it usually happens. So he put a hand there and the fingers groped a fish, but at once it slipped out and in the second moment… a small burbot calmly swam from the hole. The hunter threw the useless gun and grabbed the fish with both hands, but the slippery burbot easily got free again and dignitary swam away. Such an incredible calmness.

   In winter the hunters see the burbots much more often. This is a result of the thick underwater overgrowth absence, cold water, in which the burbots’ activity rises, and a spawning period coming. Usually the burbots spawn in the coldest frost of January. The fishing law forbids the burbot fishing since the 15-th of December till the 15-th of January and any hunter should know it. But by our observations this period should be better changed or prolonged for two weeks till the end of January. The spawning period strongly depends on the weather. Even in the end of March we caught the burbots with a hard-roe. Probably this fish will not spawn anymore and its hard-roe will dissolve after.

   If the burbots are not ‘hanging’ in the grass or lying on the soft ground it is not obligatory to shoot in them. You can thrust them. It is better to thrust into a head or near it for not to spit a gall-bladder and not to break a soft and precious liver. The burbot of four and more pounds has the solid frontal bones and it is hard to break them without shooting. These fishes should be put on a rope stringer through the eyes and even better through an eye and under the lower jaw like a cat-fish.