Fish Farmer vs. Mudfish ("Dalag")

Fish Farmer vs Mudfish (“Dalag”)

A fish farmer can’t afford to relax because he's engaged in a constant “battle” with “enemies” – nature, human intruder, and predators.

One formidable foe is the ubiquitous mudfish (“dalag” in Tagalog; “gele-gele” in Pangasinense; chana striata, scientific name), a voracious predator of bangus fingerlings and white prawns.

Newly caught dalag in tub filled with water

Dalag in tub

Dalag is a freshwater fish that can be found anywhere where there is standing water (such as swamps, marshes, irrigation canals, rice fields, and ponds). They thrive during rainy days.
 
They have this incredible ability to survive even during the peak of the dry months in the Philippines (March to May) when shallow ponds and rice fields dry up. At the worst of the dry season (even during El Nino), when water level drops to zero in most places, the mudfish go into the remaining tiny pockets or crevices of shallow water and mud protected from the sun by vegetation. 

Using their hard flattish head, they dig deep or burrow under the mud, soggy soil, or wet tree/plant roots, surviving by being inactive or dormant. Just like a fish that hibernates, with a lowered metabolic rate, while waiting for the rains to come.

And when the rains do come, the mudfish kick into motion and become active as if nothing happened. They start to swim, eat, and later breed and lay eggs.

In our farm village in Binmaley, Pangasinan in northern Philippines, our brackish water fish farm is surrounded by fresh water tilapia ponds. During rainy season, when water level rises in the nearby ponds, dalag can be seen wriggling their way on land to move from pond to pond. We can see them (usually at night) near our farm house especially while raining or during a storm. They move in a sideways motion (similar to a sidewinder snake) on the ground until they reach our brackishwater ponds.

When they do, they can cause a lot of damage by eating the milk fish (bangus) fingerlings and young white prawns in the ponds.

A newly caught large dalag that has just swallowed a pre-market size bangus

Knowing how dalag behaves is easier, but fighting it is another matter. There’s only so much we can do to control if not fully eradicate them.

Some of the ways are:

· Catching them using a local trap called “paturaw” in Pangasinense (a short stick with short nylon string and hook using a frog as bait. The stick is inserted at the lower part of dike with the line and bait hanging below water level),

· Physically removing them during pond draining (“limas”). Please click this on how to do “limas”,

· Taking them out during harvest using seine net (“kalokor”). Pls. click this and go to the section “How to Harvest Bangus”,

· Catching a school of young dalag fry swimming on the surface using a large sorting net (pls. click this for the related post on "How to Catch and Clean Mudfish Fry",

A school of young dalag fry (reddish orange hue) swimming near surface of water

Using a sorting net ("saplar") to catch the school of young dalag fry

· Catching adult mudfish using a gill net (“tabal”) (pls. click this on how to use tabal), and

Catching dalag using gill net ("tabal"); see the white colored floaters that keep the net afloat at the surface; bottom of net is pulled down by lead sinkers

· Poisoning their habitat during pond preparation (using tea seed, tobacco dust, or chemical).

Yet, after doing all these things, we still see them at the end of the cropping year when we do pond draining ("limas").

So in the end, if you can’t beat them, just eat them.

But first, we need to know how to clean dalag before we can cook and have them for lunch or dinner. 

Please click this for the related post on How to Clean Mudfish (“Dalag”).

For a recent video on how one pond worker caught three pieces of mudfish ("dalag") that invaded a recently sanitized bangus pond, please click below.

 

For a complete list of Fish Pond Buddy blog posts on fish farm-related topics, please click the Index page.