{"id":265270,"date":"2026-08-14T12:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T12:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/265270\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T12:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T12:34:11","slug":"boy-near-philadelphia-catches-a-surprising-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/265270\/","title":{"rendered":"Boy Near Philadelphia Catches a Surprising Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        An 8-year-old angler in Pennsylvania hooked a fish more at home in the Amazon River basin than a Philly-area lake. Seamus Coffey was out bass fishing with his dad when he reeled in a hefty red-bellied piranha, reports the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/aug\/13\/boy-catches-piranha-pennsylvania\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Guardian<\/a>. Dad Michael Coffey tells <a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.com\/US\/piranha-boys-unexpected-catch-sparks-reminder-exotic-pet\/story?id=135576724\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ABC News<\/a> that he was initially baffled at what type of fish it might be, but then Seamus recognized it from YouTube videos he had seen.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        State officials later confirmed it was indeed a piranha and suspect it was dumped by someone who had kept it as an exotic pet. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission warned that releasing such animals can disrupt local ecosystems and is &#8220;probably the worst thing you can do&#8221; for a former pet. The Coffeys chose not to return the fish to the water and say they disposed of it humanely.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; An 8-year-old angler in Pennsylvania hooked a fish more at home in the Amazon River basin than&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1896,18171,28,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-265270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-amazon","tag-lake","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265270","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=265270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}