Awkward: Woman catches fish just as it’s swallowing another fish in North Carolina
Fishing is never convenient for the fish, but getting caught with your mouth full — while eating another fish — is down right awkward.
This two--for-one-moment happened to angler Holly Cahoon Fassnacht of North Carolina, as she was reeling in a white perch in coastal Tyrrell County.
Fassnacht shared photos on Facebook showing the fish came out of the river tail first, stuck in the mouth of a striped bass.
“I caught a perch that then became the bait... I am going to try the lottery today,” Fassnacht joked on Facebook.
“It was a weird experience. It wasn’t like I was reeling in a perch and the bass grabbed it. It’s like the perch saw the bait and the bass saw it, too, and they both went for it at once. The hook was in the perch’s lip and the perch was stuck pretty far in the bass,” she told McClatchy News in a phone interview.
Could the perch have accidentally raced straight into the bass’ open mouth?
It’s possible, Fassnacht says. There was only one snap on the line during the couple of minutes she spent pulling the pair into the boat. Her reaction at seeing it? “What in the world?” she recalls.
Fassnacht says it happened June 17 on a quiet river near her home in Columbia, N.C., and she prefers to keep the name a secret. She fishes the spot twice a week with her husband, Josh, and their two children, ages 4 and 6.
Some anglers would have been thrilled, but there’s irony in this fish story. Striped bass are out of season, she says, so they had to throw the fish back.
“It took about three minutes to get them apart with pliers, but it lived,” she told McClatchy News. “I was upset. It was a big fish.”
Fassnacht also let the hapless perch go, allowing it to escape being an entree twice in one day. “They both lived,” she says, noting the two swam off in different directions once released.
This story was originally published June 23, 2020 at 9:47 AM with the headline "Awkward: Woman catches fish just as it’s swallowing another fish in North Carolina."