RIDLEY PARK, Pa. (WPVI) – A regular weekend fishing trip for a father and son from Pennsylvania took an irregular turn when the son caught something unusual in the lake. <\/p>\n
State officials said it points to a larger problem.<\/p>\n
When 8-year-old Seamus Coffey started reeling in his catch on Saturday morning during a fishing trip with his dad at Ridley Park Lake, he knew he\u2019d hooked something big.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m wearing it, and I think there\u2019s a bass,\u201d Seamus said.<\/p>\n
His dad, Michael Coffey, was right next to him as he reeled it in.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018Slow down, dude. You might lose it.\u2019 This looks like something we haven\u2019t caught before,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Seamus and his dad could never have expected what they found on the other end of the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s like a bluegill. I don\u2019t know what this is.\u2019 And he said, \u2018It\u2019s a piranha,\u2019\u201d Coffey said.<\/p>\n
Seamus said that he had learned about piranhas from YouTube.<\/p>\n
Mike Parker of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission confirmed that Seamus knew what he was talking about.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur biologists have confirmed that this is some species of piranha,\u201d Parker said.<\/p>\n
While the surprise catch gave the father-son fishing duo one heck of a story, Parker said the way the piranha ended up there to begin with is evidence of a larger issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of times people do, you know, they have a dream. I want to own an exotic fish or a snake or an alligator and it\u2019s cute when it\u2019s small, but maybe they can\u2019t afford that or house it anymore and they decide maybe this is someone else\u2019s problem,\u201d Parker said.<\/p>\n
Parker said the tropical fish, native to South America, wouldn\u2019t have survived in Pennsylvania waters for very long.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we ended up getting rid of it humanely,\u201d Coffey said.<\/p>\n
That was the right move, according to Parker. He said the piranha was dangerous to the public and could have been disruptive to the ecosystem.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if the law says that you\u2019re allowed to own an exotic pet, whether that be a fish or a reptile, you\u2019re not allowed to introduce that species into the wilds of Pennsylvania, so that is unlawful. You can be fined, prosecuted,\u201d Parker said.<\/p>\n
As for the fearless fisherman Seamus, he said he wasn\u2019t scared of the razor-toothed predator at all, and his number-one hobby remains unchanged.<\/p>\n
\u201cFishing is my favorite thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had some crazy fishing experiences, but that\u2019s definitely number one,\u201d Coffey said.<\/p>\n
Parker said it\u2019s pretty unlikely that there is more than one piranha in the lake.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WPVI via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RIDLEY PARK, Pa. (WPVI) – A regular weekend fishing trip for a father and son from Pennsylvania took…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[111736,111737,111735,28,28411,30,29,111471,111474,111738],"class_list":["post-265173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-8-year-old-catches-piranha-during-fishing-trip","tag-8-year-old-catches-piranha-in-us-lake","tag-kid-catch-piranha-in-pennsylvania-lake","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-fish-and-boat-commission","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-piranha","tag-seamus-coffey","tag-weird-fishing-trip-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}