Snakehead Caught In Lake Wylie

April 23, 2009

Release from: Bruce Henderson
Charlotte Observer

A predatory Asian fish that has already spawned low-budget horror movies has again been caught in Lake Wylie, N.C. wildlife officials said Wednesday.

Fisherman Gary Upton of McAdenville caught the 12-pound, 31-inch northern snakehead Sunday in the lake's Paw Creek arm in Mecklenburg County. He took his saw-toothed catch to a N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission biologist who identified it.

It was at least the second snakehead to be caught in Wylie since 2007. Fishermen claimed to have caught two in 2002, but that catch was never confirmed.

“I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few more in there,” said Kent Nelson, the wildlife commission's fisheries program manager.

A population of snakeheads in 13,000-acre Wylie, biologists say, would be bad news for game fish such as largemouth bass and crappie. Snakeheads not only compete with native fishes for prey, but will also simply eat smaller competitors.

Part of the creepiness of these “Frankenfish,” as one movie dubbed them, is their ability to live out of water for several days. That ability has given rise to notions that they can “walk” from one body of water to another. “Wallow” is more like it, experts say.

Snakeheads have become so numerous in Arkansas that officials there are trying to poison them, a drastic step because it will kill other species.

State biologists tried to find more snakeheads in Wylie this week, with no luck, Nelson said. The fish may be in water too deep for electrofishing gear, which stuns fish to the water's surface, to work, he said.

The natives of eastern Asia had to have been released into Wylie, Nelson said, despite a 2004 state law making it illegal to buy, sell or possess live snakeheads.

Fisheries biologists said Upton did the right thing in reporting his catch. A Wylie fisherman who caught a snakehead in May 2007 mistook the fish for another species, a bowfin, and released it, although the snapshot he took allowed biologists to identify it later as a snakehead.

Commission biologists are posting fliers illustrating the differences between the two species around Lake Wylie. Identification tips are also online at www.ncwildlife.org.