Once Again, Life Imitates Monty Python....

...this time in Lufkin, Texas, where a catfish was allegedly used as a slapping weapon:

Texas police are still investigating to see if they can hook anyone with charges after an alleged fish-slapping incident over the weekend.

During the incident in Lufkin, a woman supposedly slapped her sister-in-law in the face face with a dead catfish.

There is, of course, nothing new under the sun:

You Don't Tug On Superman's Cape, You Don't Spit Into the Wind, You Don't Pull the Mask Off That Old Lone Ranger...

and you don't mess around with Jim - - or go swimming in a river full of piranhas.

A mass piranha attack left sixty people injured as they enjoy a Christmas Day swim in an Argentine river.

Dozens of bathers including more than 20 children were bitten by the shoal of meat-eating fish during the surprise attack.

A seven-year-old girl lost part of one of her fingers and a young boy was left with an open fracture in his hand.

Other swimmers suffered deep cuts to their ankles, fingers and hands.

The attack happened on Christmas Day on a popular beach on the Parana River in the city of Rosario, birthplace of Barcelona striker Messi.

Swimmers trying to cool down in 100 degrees temperatures raced out of the water bleeding from wounds and shouting for help while the parents of children in the water rushed to their aid to drag them to safety.

Coastguards called paramedics so they could assist the most seriously injured before police temporarily closed off the beach, forcing people out of the water who continued to swim despite the danger.



How about Down By the River, Fish Bit My Baby?



How about Ha ha, you fool! You fell for one of the classic blunders!



How about They chose poorly?



How about What a maroon!

Headline of the Day

"Rare fish nicknamed the Nutcracker that bites men's testicles as they swim is found in the River Seine."

Merde!

Sturgeon Stocks In Cape Fear River Rebounding

Although, if you read the article, you realize that the fish may not have been endangered to begin with, just poorly understood.

It's probably that way with much of science; even when research and study is lacking, God-like pronouncements very often aren't. I agree, though, that it is best to err on side of caution when ignorance is a factor. Caution, however, is not the same as the-sky-is-falling Chicken Littlism.

Try That With a Barracuda, Why Don't Ya?

Man "catches" a tarpon with his arm.

Fewer Dams = Better Fishing

While there is much to be said for dams in their role of flood control and reservoirs for drinking water, they also degrade the quality of fishing.

For years, the first thing Ranger Tom Charles has done on spring mornings at Cape Fear Lock and Dam No. 1 is let in the fish.

“There’s probably hundreds of them” waiting below the 11-foot dam 39 miles northwest of Wilmington, he says. “When they’re in there pretty thick, you’ll see them jump, but you can’t see how many there are.”

Most are American shad, waiting for Charles to open the lock to start them on the 90 miles or so to their ancestral spawning grounds in Harnett County. It’s the short leg of the journey for some of these fish important to the marine food chain; they started out in Nova Scotia.

The churning mass also includes striped bass, which migrate shorter distances, and there could also be an endangered sturgeon or two, says Charles, who works for the Army Corps of Engineers.

When spawning territories are blocked, “You lose the vast majority of the population,” says Mike Wicker, Raleigh-based biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

When lifted by the locks, 35 percent of the shad make it past all three dams, according to a study by Dr. Joseph Hightower, U.S. Geological Survey biologist teaching at N.C. State.

Beginning next spring, North Carolina, the corps, and the fish will embark on a new venture. The lock will stay closed, and the fish will begin their journey on their own. They’ll jump up a natural-looking “rock arch rapids” or weir – a 200-foot slope of rock added to the downstream side of the dam.

It stretches up to the top, and “fish swim right over the dam,” Wicker says.

Although it’s a first for the Southeast, “That kind of rock arch weir has been done quite a bit in the Midwest,” Hightower says. “It’s been very successful there.”

Click the link to read the rest.

Photo of the Day

At the annual Hampstead, NC, "Spot" Festival, two women demonstrate lesbian sexual positions common in Saudi Arabia (iffen ya don't get caught! ;-) ):

More photos from the Spot Festival here.

For those of you unfamiliar with Spot, here is the Wikipedia entry.

Invasive Species? Hunt 'Em Down and Eat 'Em!

The inaugural Lionfish Derby in Wilmington, NC.

Early Saturday morning, about 20 scuba divers armed with spear guns will embark from Masonboro Inlet on a sea safari. Their mission: to lance and kill as many lionfish as possible.

"We're trying to do our part to control the lionfish in this area," said Inman Campbell, shop manager at Scuba-Now in Wilmington, who organized Saturday's inaugural Lionfish Derby. "They're starting to take over."

The lionfish, a spiny, brown-and-white striped animal native to the South Pacific and Indian oceans, has been present in North Carolina waters since at least the early 2000s. While visually stunning, the invasive species is a prolific breeder and a voracious eater that can quickly and easily thin populations of native fish. Lionfish are covered in venomous spikes and thus have very few predators in Carolina waters, which can make it difficult to control their population sprawl.

It's a good start. Another way to reduce their numbers is to exempt lionfish from any sort of catch limit for both commercial and hobby fishermen.

Sometimes Fish Eats You!

Or nearly so:

It was a dramatic weekend for kayakers in waters off Cambria: A Paso Robles fisherman escaped an attack by a great white shark Saturday, although his kayak didn’t, and another Paso Robles kayaker was plucked from the 51-degree-water Sunday in time to save his life.

Joey Nocchi, 30, of Paso Robles, had the big-fish tale to tell, after his kayak was upended and bitten by a great white shark. Nocchi and friends James Byon of Paso Robles and Matt Kerschke of Los Osos were fishing for rockfish at 1:30 p.m. Saturday near Leffingwell Landing off Moonstone Beach.

“We’d just about limited out on rock cod, and Matt caught two halibut,” Nocchi said. “We were cruising along together and talking.”

He was reaching for his knife when “I got hit from underneath and started coming up out of the water. My buddies said I came out of the water 4 to 5 feet — it flipped me over the side. The shark rolled the whole kayak over, rolled me out of it, and he went over the top of it. He swam across me — his tail touched me.” His friends estimated the shark was 12 feet to 14 feet long.

Nocchi’s buddies told him “the shark came all the way out of the water, jaws open, extra eyelids closed like they do when they’re making a kill strike.

“I swam back as fast as I could and got back on the back of the kayak. I didn’t even think to turn it back over.”

Nocchi said he was glad he did not fish alone, and added he’d likely stay out of the ocean for a while. “I’ll be bass fishing for a while, probably from the shore.”

Can't say I blame him for that.

Smells Like...Fish

Meanwhile, in Newfoundland, Canada, a teacher is in trouble for spraying a fish-smelling student with Febreeze.

Which immediately brought to mind an old song by Roosevelt Sykes (among others):



Or, hell. Since I'm going there, might as well go all the way with it:

The Old Man Would Understand

Trying to rebuild stocks of Menhaden along the Atlantic Seaboard.

Called menhaden, the fish — part of the herring family — is today mostly used as fertilizer, feed for animals and farmed-fish and bait. Its place in American history goes back to the Pilgrims. Menhaden were the fish that Native Americans taught the Pilgrims to plant with corn as fertilizer. New England tribes in the pre-Colonial era called the menhaden munnawhatteaug, or "fertilizer."

As the most heavily harvested fish, in terms of pounds, on the East Coast, its numbers have dropped to about 10% of its Colonial-era population.

So on Wednesday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted 14-3 to reduce the amount of menhaden that may be caught by about 25% compared with the previous year's catch. That should mean on average 60,000 metric tons "more fish in the water to help the population begin to rebuild," says John Crawford of the Pew Environment Group's Northeast Fisheries Program.

The commission's decision was complicated, based on the estimated percentage of spawning-aged fish , says Ben Landry, director of public affairs for Omega Protein Corp. The Houston-based company catches 75%-80% of menhaden, which it turns into fish meal and fish oil at its Reedville, Va., plant.

If you've ever read The Old Man and the Boy by Robert Ruark, you'll remember that the Old Man, Capt. Ned Askins, owned a "pogie boat" for Menhaden fishing in Southport, NC, and young Robert had some of his adventures on that boat. You'll also recall that the Old Man was a firm believer in conservation, teaching Ruark the importance of preserving various species (quail, in particular) by not over-hunting or over-fishing.

*Knock Knock* Land Shark

In the woods in New Hampshire.

"Now I Can Have Caviar Every Day"

Florida's infant farm-raised caviar industry.

Hello, Pleasure Island Towing?

We need you to tow a shark off the beach.

It's possible the shark was in an undertow zone, but doubtful that it was in a tow-away zone.

OK, Don't Do This

An Okinawan diving instructor died after stepping on a stonefish.

It's the worst pain known to man, you know:

Kudzu Pie For Dessert?

The state of Florida wants people to start eating lionfish, an invasive species of saltwater fish, in an effort to reduce their numbers.

An even better idea would be to let the Chinese know that lionfish, when eaten, make your dick hard. A Chinaman will eat anything if he thinks it will work as an aphrodisiac, even if it is an endangered species.

Fishing Ban In The Sea of Galilee

Fishing banned for two years in the Sea of Galilee to allow stocks depleted by overfishing to recover.

The fish are known as St. Peter's Fish, and are a variety of tilapia.

Meanwhile, In Arkansas...

(I can already hear my readers saying uh oh!)

Meanwhile, in Arkansas, the family of the ironically-named Darwin Aaron nearly died after eating gar eggs.

Only after Darwin, his brother Russell and his son Carson were all puking their guts up did Aaron's wife, Tiffany, think to look up gar eggs on the internet and discover that eggs of all gar species are poisonous.

In case you haven't ever seen one, here is a pic of a longnose gar:



I didn't know that gar eggs were poisonous, either, but then I've never been seized with a sudden desire to eat either the eggs or the gar itself. In Florida my grandfather Robert Ivy Evans (Pah Paw, we called him) used to fish for gar at night, and when he got them up to the dock he'd blast them with a shotgun, then would use the dead gar for fertilizer in his garden. We considered them trash fish.

Learn Something New Every Day

I'm a Florida native, but I never knew that sturgeon could be found in Florida rivers.

When The Salmon Return

Rivers in Wales that were dead from coal mining pollution are now so clean that salmon have returned and can be found from sea to headwaters.

A remarkable environmental success story, and the kind that really ought to get more attention, rather than the apocalyptic OMG we're all gonna die if we don't do something about glowball warming this week!