Mystery fish 'inhaled' fisherman's fly and chomped through line with razor sharp teeth

dailystar.co.uk:

fisherman has revealed how a mystery fish that he thought was a piranha because of its razor sharp teeth "freaking inhaled" his fly and cut through his line with ease.Eric Estrada, an artist and fly fisherman who lives in North Miami Beach, Florida, caught the beast in a neighbourhood pond a couple of weeks ago.He said he usually catches peacock bass, snook or tarpon, but this time he was perplexed to pull out a monster fish with sharp teeth.READ MORE: 'Biblical' plague of flies descends on UK beach as people duck from swarm“He freaking inhaled it," the bemused fisherman said of what the predator did to his fly.

When he threw in a second fly, similar fish swarmed around it. He snared another one and inpsected it before chucking it back into the water.

He thought the approximately 18 inch-long fish was a piranha because of its gnashers. He even uploaded a YouTube video under the title, “INVASIVE Piranhas on a FEEDING FRENZY in a Miami Pond????”However, Florida’s wildlife management agency and experts believe it was almost certainly a pacu.To stay up to date with all the latest news, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here .Pacu is a common name used to refer to several species of mostly omnivorous South American freshwater fish that are related to the piranha - and also have huge sharp teeth. “Pacu are sort of an oddball in terms of what they eat,” said Jeffrey Hill, fisheries extension specialist for nonnative fish under the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “They eat a lot of leaves, fruits, nuts and things that just fall into the water.

They will eat invertebrates and occasionally fish but they’re not a major predator.”Pacu teeth look like human molars and sit in.