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WASHINGTON CITY — A St. George man got a big surprise when he went fishing at a local pond and reeled in a 9-pound pacu, a South American freshwater fish that’s related to piranha.
Mark Magnera said on June 12, he went to a warm-water pond in Washington City known by locals as The Boiler. The area had been closed off by city officials for about 15 years and had recently been reopened to the public, according to Division of Wildlife Resources southern region aquatics manager Richard Hepworth.
Magnera said when he heard it had been reopened, he went down to check it out and saw some large fish in the water.
“We go down there and the first thing I see is (sic) two, big dark fish,” Magnera said. “And I’m a fisherman so I wanted to catch one of them. So I came back the next day and I caught one and I had no idea what it was.”
Magnera said originally he thought the fish looked like an Asian carp so he knew the fish wouldn’t want a lure or worm. He used a vanilla wafer as his bait and caught a 9-pound, 21- inch fish. However, he released it after taking pictures because he thought it might be an endangered species.
“I didn’t know what it was (or) if it was a sensitive species. I had no idea,” Magnera said. “I’ve caught like 12-pound catfish out of Utah Lake and none of them put up the fight that those pacu did.”
Magnera later took the photos to DWR officials who confirmed the fish was a pacu, the “vegetarians of the piranha world,” Hepworth said. While an exotic fish in Southern Utah was a mystery to Magnera, Hepworth said The Boiler has historically been known as a dumping area for people’s aquarium fish.
“I remember when I was a kid 35 years ago going down there and catching some really weird fish that had been dumped out of somebody’s aquarium,” Hepworth said. “People get these aquarium fish. They like them for... a long time, but then one day they get sick of having to clean the aquarium or something and people have a hard time killing their pets.”
Hepworth said The Boiler has a warm-water spring that flows into it so the exotic fish thrive in the pond. Magnera said he saw hundreds of pacu when he was fishing there.
Mark Magnera
Several lakes and rivers around Utah have had their ecosystems destroyed by people dumping their exotic fish into them, Hepworth said. In May 2013, hundreds of goldfish were discovered in Parleys Creek and when Utah Chub were illegally transplanted into Panguitch Lake and Strawberry Reservoir, the treatments cost the state $300,000 and about $3 million, respectively.
“People releasing live fish that they’ve moved from one place to another — whether it’s from an aquarium at their house out into the wild or from one lake to another — is probably the biggest problem we face in fisheries management,” Hepworth said. “We’re spending thousands of dollars trying to remove carp out of Utah Lake and goldfish are very similar.”
Any person who moves live fish from one body of water to another is guilty of a class A misdemeanor and may be fined up to $2,500, according to the 2015 Utah Fishing Guidebook.
Hepworth encouraged people to try donating their unwanted fish to pet stores. If pet stores won’t accept the fish, then Hepworth said people need to kill them by flushing them down the toilet or otherwise.
“Really the best and easiest way for somebody is to go ahead and kill them,” he said. “I know people have a hard time, but my feelings are, it’s being a responsible pet owner… to deal with that at that time.”
