raisinbran20 asked
A Montgomery County fisherman has bagged a northern snakehead, the same voracious, fin-walking Asian predator that made national news when it took over three Crofton ponds in the summer of 2002. Terry Wintermoyer plucked the nasty customer from Wheaton Regional Park's Pine Lake on Monday afternoon, prompting officials to close the lake to fishing and to make plans to drain it as quickly as possible. The lake's bass and sunfish, numbering in the hundreds, will be pumped out and shipped to other ponds. The 19-inch snakehead that Wintermoyer caught lived up to the aggressive reputation of its species: as it lay covered in plastic wrap shortly after Wintermoyer landed it, the snakehead bit into the steel-tipped boot of a passer-by. Besides devouring other fish in their environment, snakeheads are known for surviving out of water for long periods and moving on land with their fins. At a lakeside news conference Wednesday, Wintermoyer, 23, said he immediately knew he had something special. He used pliers to extract the hook from the snakehead's mouth -- thus avoiding its fang-like teeth -- and admired his catch for an hour before turning it in to park police. 'I hadn't seen anything like that my whole life,' he said. Using electroshock to survey the lake's population, state biologists found no evidence of other snakeheads. The process passes an electric current into the water to stun fish within 20 feet, forcing them to float to the surface for examination. The survey turned up hundreds of bass and sunfish, but no snakehead. Even so, officials concede they might have missed a snakehead or two. 'I'll be confident when the pond is drained,' said Steven Early, assistant director of fisheries for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. There's no apparent threat to downstream waterways. The pond feeds into the Northwest Branch, a tributary of both the Anacostia and the Potomac rivers, state wildlife officials said. The Maryland-National Capita
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