Fisherman hooks piranha in Des Plaines River
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/piranha05.html
July 5, 2006
FROM STNG WIRE REPORTS
It wasn't until Bridgeview angler Ed Reinhart pulled his seventh fish out of the Des Plaines River on Sunday afternoon that it became clear why the first six had been so eager to get out of the water.

"Jaws," an 11-inch, 11/2-pound red-bellied piranha, isn't the sort of chap you'd like to meet in a river or expect to find near Lemont, several thousand miles from its South American home.
"I was using chicken liver for bait, and I thought I had another catfish at first," retired aircraft mechanic Reinhart, 65, said from the comparative safety of his home in the 7700 block of South 78th Court on Tuesday.

"But he stayed right on the bottom and put up a bit of a fight. "When I reeled him in, I thought, 'What the heck is that?'

"There were a couple of other guys fishing there, and I showed it to them, and they said, 'You got yourself a piranha.' So I opened up its mouth, and, sure enough, there were all those teeth."
Biologists have yet to confirm Jaws as a bonafide piranha, although occasional piranha catches have been reported in Lake Michigan and Illinois rivers.

The voracious meat-eating, razor-toothed fishes are thought to have been pets that outgrew their owners' tanks or ability to supply a never-ending diet of fish dinners.
They cannot survive long or breed outside the confines of a temperature-regulated tank.
"It costs a lot of money to feed a piranha, and if you don't, they'll eat each other," said Reinhart, who has been fishing since he was 6 and whose most exciting moment before Sunday was when he capsized a canoe on a Wisconsin lake five years ago.

He added, "Nobody has just one piranha, so there's probably more still in there."
Reinhart's wife, Lucy, said he had woken her Sunday evening by waving the fish in her face.
She added: "I told him, 'Get that away from me!' So he put it in the freezer."

Reinhart plans to have Jaws mounted on his wall — right next to "Big Mouth Billy Bass," a battery-powered, singing, novelty fish.