This young fisherman won’t ever forget catching a tropical fish in… Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Michael Coffey was out fishing at Ridley Park Lake with his son, Seamus, when the 8-year-old angler hooked something that had a lot of fight in it. Michael initially assumed that Seamus had an aggressive and sizable bass on the line. Once they started to pull it out of the water, Michael told ABC News that he had no idea what it was:
“I thought it might be a bluegill or something else common to the area. I had no idea what it really was. Then Seamus looked closer and said, ‘It’s a piranha!'”
Classic thing for a kid to say right? Their imaginations run wild, and they would think it would be possible to catch a piranha out of a lake in Pennsylvania. The kicker? Seamus was absolutely right… the tropical fish that’s native to South America was exactly what he had caught out of the water.
When Seamus was asked by ABC how he knew it was a piranha, the young fisherman responded with this:
“Because I watch YouTube.”
That checks out. Kids love YouTube… but at least this proves that some of them are actually learning something from the online video-sharing platform.
Michael Coffey decided to get rid of the fish humanely, since it obviously didn’t belong in the Philadelphia-area lake it had just been caught from. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission said that was the right thing to do, and believes the piranha probably ended up in the lake because it used to be someone’s pet:
“An 8-year-old Pennsylvania boy shocked his father after reeling in a 9.5-inch, 2-pound piranha from Ridley Park Lake. Officials believe it was likely an abandoned exotic pet.”
That’s one scary looking fish, and one heck of a rare catch that Seamus won’t ever forget.
Mike Parker, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, blamed the piranha’s presence in the Philly-area lake on an irresponsible exotic pet owner. He says whoever owned the fish likely became overwhelmed by it (that’s how it goes with most exotic pets) and then decided it would be someone else’s problem:
“It’s a lifelong responsibility for many of these species—they can live for years, require special diets, and need very specific care and environments. Unfortunately, when owners become overwhelmed, they sometimes think releasing these pets into the wild is the best option. In reality, it’s one of the worst things you can do, both for the animal and for the local ecosystem.”
Though it’s obviously a horrible thing for the environment, it did provide this once-in-a-lifetime catch for an 8-year-old angler. Imagine being a kid, casting a line in a lake and saying, “I bet I could catch a piranha out of here.” In any other circumstance, that’s an example of an imagination running wild.
For Seamus, it was a reality, and he says that there’s nothing he loves more than fishing:
“Fishing is my favorite thing.”
And it’s no surprise that catching a tropical fish in a non-tropical location only bolstered that feeling for Seamus.
