Zeb Hogan of the show "??Monster Fish"? on Nat Geo WILD swims with the fishes in River Giants exhibit at the Tennessee Aquarium (Contributed by Nat Geo WILD)For more than 150 years, legends have flourished along the fertile banks of the Tennessee and Coosa rivers of astonishing creatures that live in their muddy depths.
In the 1800s, tales of serpents abounded in both rivers, including a legend in which anyone spotting the creature was cursed and soon would die. In the mid-1900s, the most popular legendary river creature became “catzilla,” a species of catfish that reportedly grew to the size of Volkswagon Beetles at several dams along the Tennessee River.
What lurks beneath the deceptively placid surfaces of Alabama’s rivers? Are there monsters in our midst?
The truth is out there, and Dr. Zeb Hogan of the Nat Geo WILD channel is looking for it.
Hogan, a biologist and host of the show “Monster Fish,” recently spent time at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga and with fishermen and scientists around the South, searching for answers to the legend of the Volkswagon-sized catfish, a tale passed among fishermen from Wilson Dam in Muscle Shoals to Lake Guntersville Dam in Marshall County.
Nat Geo WILD describes the episode on giant catfish in a press release: “Lured by stories of catfish the size of Volkswagens, Zeb is on a mission to find out if the legendary giant catfish of the South really exists.”
The results of his research will appear in the first episode of a new season of “Monster Fish” at 9 p.m. Central time on July 5.
The truth about Catzilla
For the past 10 years, Hogan has been working to find, study and protect the world’s largest freshwater fish. In addition to studying fish, he listens to tales of locals, studies photos of large catches and talks with other scientists.
This Mekong giant catfish was discovered in Thailand in 2007. The largest Mekong cat ever caught weighed more than 600 pounds. The largest catfish species in North America are blue cats. (Contributed by Zeb Hogan)“I’ve been traveling to different locations around the world investigating stories of very large fish,” he said by telephone Tuesday. “There are two dozen species of freshwater fish larger than 6 feet and weighing more than 200 pounds, which is as big as a person, and some weigh up to 600 or 700 pounds.”
A Mekong giant catfish caught in Thailand in 2010 was 9 feet long and weighed 646 pounds.
See photos here.
However, the largest catfish in North America are blue cats, and the world record blue catfish caught in North Carolina in 2011 weighed 143 pounds. While many of the world’s largest freshwater fish are located outside of North America, several large species can be found in area rivers, including blue catfish, flathead catfish, the Mississippi paddlefish, lake sturgeon, pallid sturgeon, and the alligator gar.
Zeb Hogan of the show â??Monster Fishâ? on Nat Geo WILD lowers an electric shock boom into the Tennessee River during a recent search for giant catfish. (Contributed by Nat Geo WILD)Hogan said a 140-pound fish would seem larger in the muddy depths of a river. On his trip to the Tennessee Aquarium, Hogan dove with fish in its new River Giants exhibit so he could experience swimming with the over-sized specimens.
Also fueling the big fish tales is the fact that river creatures likely grew even larger in the past, before humans and chemicals interfered with habitats.
“Some of these stories we hear about Volkswagon-sized catfish and people seeing serpents in the water come from older times when probably even bigger animals and fish were living in rivers and lakes,” Hogan said.
The car-sized catfish legend is widespread, he said.
“You’ll hear it from scuba divers and fishermen,” he said. “If you go around to the dams in the South, it seems as if every dam has its own story.”
So is Catzilla real? In exotic locales, yes.
“Car-sized catfish do exist. I’ve seen one,” Hogan said.
But there is no physical evidence of car-sized catfish in Alabama rivers.
The curse of the river serpent
Farmers reported spotting giant serpents in the Tennessee River as far back as 1822, when Buck Sutton was fishing in Van’s Hole in a branch of the river in Tennessee. He spotted an undulating creature and told friends: “The thing was monstrous. It was the creature. I could see the thing as clear as day,” reported newspaper columnist E. Randall Floyd in a 1993 article in the Spartanburg, S.C., Herald-Journal.
This photo is an example of historic pictures Dr. Zeb Hogan studies when researching legends of giant fish. The photo is controversial because a descendant of the man who took the photo claims the man in the photo is actually a cardboard cutout to make the fish appear larger. (Contributed by Zeb Hogan)Sutton and his friends were alarmed because people along the river knew that anyone who looked upon the serpent was cursed.
As the legend foretold, Sutton died a few days after the sighting. Floyd chronicles others whose experiences mirrored Sutton’s: Billy Burns died in 1827 after seeing the serpent; Jim Windom in 1829.
However, Sallie Wilson reportedly saw the creature in the mid-1830s and experienced no ill effects. Hers was the last “authenticated account” of the serpent, Floyd wrote.
The creature people reported seeing was about 25 feet long and had incredible speed.
In 1877, reports appeared in The Gadsden Times of sightings of serpents in the Coosa River, a tributary of the Alabama River. A fisherman reported seeing a 20-foot-long creature with large fins slithering near the banks at Ball Play Creek before it slipped beneath the surface.
Are the serpents real?
No remains have ever been found to support existence of river serpents. Scientists believe people likely were witnessing exceptionally large species of fish that live in Alabama rivers.
“My job as a scientist is to separate fact from fiction but ‘fact’ is already amazing and unbelievable enough,” Hogan said. “At end of the day, there certainly is some truth to these stories but people also enjoy telling stories. Fishermen tell tall tales.”
The real ‘serpent’ was prehistoric
Evidence of an Alabama sea serpent does exist in the fossilized bones of the zeuglodon, a prehistoric whale that grew to about 70 feet in length. But those creatures existed in the Eocene Epoch between 34 and 50 million years ago and not in modern-day Alabama.
The bones – found in the 1830s in Clark, Choctaw and Washington counties – were named the state fossil in 1984.
Read the story of the Alabama State Fossil here.
Here is a preview of the July 5 episode of "Monster Fish" on Nat Geo WILD.Join al.com reporter Kelly Kazek on her weekly journey through Alabama to record the region’s quirky history, strange roadside attractions and tales of colorful characters. Call her at 256-701-0576 or find her on Facebook.