A fisherman in the US has caught a 25cm/10" Pacu in a lake in Passaic, New Jersey.
Tom Boylan is a retired bus driver who has plenty of experience in fishing, and it's something he does on an almost daily basis — last year he caught almost 900 carp at the lake in Third Ward Veterans Memorial Park.
However, when he hooked the Pacu at the weekend he had no idea what it was. He says it looked like a piranha but lacked the teeth and was unlike anything he's come across before.
Staff at an aquatic shop later ID'd the fish as a Pacu, native to South America.
Pat Egean, who is the manager at Absolutely Fish based in Clifton, says his shop doesn't sell tankbusters like Pacu because they are so unsuitable for the aquarium, and thinks this one — still a tidder by Pacu standards — was dumped because it had already outgrown its tank.
This is the third Pacu caught in non-native waters in less than two months. In early August a 20cm/8" specimen was caught in Scandinavian waters, while at the end of the month a larger 30cm/12" specimen was caught in the Seine, in Paris.
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