An 11-year-old boy fishing in his neighborhood pond in Oklahoma made an unusual catch over the weekend: a South American fish with a mouth full of blunt, human-like teeth.
Officials with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation said Charlie Clinton caught a pacu, an invasive, South American fish closely related to piranha. His mother, Janna Clinton, told NPR that the fish bit while Charlie was fishing a pond behind the family’s home in a suburb north of Oklahoma City.
“He was screaming, ‘Oh my God, mom! Oh my God!’ " Clinton told NPR. “I thought he was just being dramatic, to be honest.”
The Clintons contacted a game warden and later learned that pacus are invasive fish, NPR reported. Charlie had let the pacu go back into the water over the weekend because he was fishing in a catch-and-release pond, according to the news network.
Clinton told NPR that the family “didn’t know any better at the time.”
“We made a mistake there,” she said.
Pacu can grow as large as 3.5 feet long and weigh 88 pounds, according to officials. Known as “vegetarian piranhas,” pacus are omnivores with powerful jaws designed to crush plant seeds, The Oklahoman reported. They are commonly sold for home aquariums and can make good pets, the newspaper reported.
The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation asked that people who catch the fish remove them from the watershed and contact their local game warden.
“These fish are generally harmless to humans, but the practice of dumping unwanted pets in waterways can be incredibly harmful to native wildlife,” officials said. “They are an exotic, invasive species that can cause damage to our local ecosystems.”
Pacu have been found in 43 states, although officials with the U.S. Geological Survey noted that “no instances of spawning of successful reproduction have been documented.” The fish was last caught in Tennessee in 2020.
Since releasing the pacu over the weekend, Charlie has been trying to catch the fish again, Clinton told NPR.
“If he catches it again, we’re going to get it mounted for him. I think that’s a heck of a prize and he deserves it,” she said. “I told him we’d make it look like the fish was smiling so you could see its teeth.”