Jerry Melton recently caught a piranha in the Catawba River. He is keeping the fish in his freezer until he can have it mounted.
Posted on 07/05/2007 12:18:14 PM PDT by Turret Gunner A20
Jerry Melton wanted to catch his dinner while fishing Thursday morning on a stretch of the Catawba River, but what he caught could have taken a bite out of him.
Melton, 46, was fishing for catfish in Mount Holly when his line went taut around 11:30 a.m. "It was fighting like it was a bream or maybe a crappie," he said. "When I got it on the bank I didn't really know what it was; I hadn't seen anything like it before."
State wildlife officials later identified the fish as a piranha, in a new instance of a potentially dangerous non-native fish being dumped into local waters.
Melton noticed something very different when he opened the fish's mouth with his pocketknife: "It had a whole bunch of teeth. Then it just bit down and left an impression in the blade of my knife."
(Excerpt) Read more at charlotte.com ...
Stop buying knives from Pakistan. Then fish will fear your knife.
I see a Pete Seeger song out of this “The Piranha of the Catawba”.
Sure, Little Johnny believed his mama when she told him the cat ate his pet fish Pirrie and all his fish cousins.
“In a recent study, scientists from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland found that the classic image of piranhas as aggressive predators isn’t true. Researchers found that they form their famous packs for protection from predators rather than to hunt for food.”
Okey Dokey
This means very little to the guy who just had his guts chewed out by a defense-oriented pack.
We are NOT looking for these!!!
Jerry Melton recently caught a piranha in the Catawba River. He is keeping the fish in his freezer until he can have it mounted.
It’ll be fun watching PETA and the treehuggers come out in favor of this fish and demanding all watersports be halted in the areas affected so they can flourish.
Or, has it happened already?
Holy Moly, wouldn’t want to take one of them off the hook!!!! And I thought taking catfish off was rough.
“In a recent study, scientists from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland found that the classic image of piranhas as aggressive predators isn’t true. Researchers found that they form their famous packs for protection from predators rather than to hunt for food.”
Good, then we can release all of them caught where stocked illegally into the waters where this guy swims!!!
If they can survive the winters here they will certainly make people quit worrying about the snakehead fish! They are not as ravenous as the movies made them out to be, but they do bite swimmers. They leave nasty-looking quarter to half-dollar-sized scars. One bite would get your attention and, if you did not panic and drown, you could get out of the water to escape them. If you drown they might well eat you down to the bone (but, hey, you’d be dead, so who’s to complain?).
Maybe I will send this guy my Brazilian recipe for piranha soup.
Yep.
“They’re part of nature. They’re one with the environment. We have no right to disturb-—YAAAGGGHHHH!!!!”
In Florida we know how to deal with dangerous exotic species, if we find out soon enough.
“And I thought taking catfish off was rough.”
I hate catching catfish. I’ve never caught a really big lunker and have never caught a catfish on purpose. Even the young ones are trouble enough for me, LOL!
South Carolina Ping
Add me to the list. | Remove me from the list.
One time, a few years ago, an outdoor writer was fishing with a smallmouth bass fishing guide on the famed Dale Hollow Lake in Tennessee, on the Kentucky/Tennessee border, the home of the world record smallmouth bass.
While fishing, the smallmouth didn’t cooperate. The OD writer hooked something BIG, and those on the boat speculated it might be the new world record SM, at least when the rod was bent and the fight was on.
Anyway, after a long fight (when the fish got tired), the OD writer pulled a big fish out of the water, and used the rod tip to swing it into the boat.
A snapping, hissing monster started jumping all over the boat, and the OD writer was on the other end of this. Then the monster opened its mouth, and an OD writer jumped (according to the legend) OVER the head of the fishing guide and to the other end of the boat, almost jumped out of the vessel.
That was ONE scary fish.
The fish was a musky, and they are not only ugly, but mean. This one hissed, and snapped his teeth at the boat occupants.
If you ever fish Dale Hollow Lake with certain smallmouth bass guides, you’ll hear this legend, but don’t believe it.
Catfish? They get so big here in the South we just beat them in head with a ball (pean) hammer and let ‘em go. Then they come back and bite your hook again, just to haunt you!!!
nay, as it it would make the lad sick. (chuckle)
free dixie,sw
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