Most of these are large enough to catch with a hook, but sportsmen seldom see them.īuffalo were the most-important fishes, pound-wise, in Louisiana’s thriving freshwater commercial fishery of the 1920s to through the 1940s. Buffalos are in the sucker family, of which Louisiana has 11 other species that include three carpsuckers, three chubsuckers, two redhorses, a hogsucker, a blue sucker and a spotted sucker. In spite of their appearance, buffalo are not in the same family as carps, which are in the minnow family. In spite of growing to prodigious sizes (the IGFA records are 63 pounds for the black, 70 pounds for the bigmouth and 82 pounds for the smallmouth), they very seldom bite hooks and never take artificial lures. Indeed, all three species are carp-like in appearance to the average sportsman, or at least to the average sportsman who has ever caught one. “Cyprinellus” is also Latin and means “little carp.” “Niger” is Latin for “black.” Last identified by scientists was the bigmouth buffalo, Ictiobus cyprinellus, in 1844. The second species named was the black buffalo, Ictiobus niger, also named in 1819, again by Rafinesque. ![]() Both names are Greek in origin and mean “bull fish.” Land buffaloes or bison were often called bulls by the French. ![]() It was the smallmouth buffalo, Ictiobus bubalus. ![]() The first buffalo species was scientifically named in 1819 by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmalz, the eccentric French-born naturalist who had become a professor of botany at Transylvania University in Kentucky that same year.
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