Extreme Surprise: Belarusian Man Catches ‘American Guest’

It came as a little shock.

Fisherman from Minsk Yauhen Vabishchevich caught a sunfish in one of the reservoirs in the Dziatlava district. This is an unusual and invasive fish for the local ichthyofauna, writes the fishing publication fishingby.com.

“The fish was caught in a wild isolated lake, I was extremely surprised and even a little shocked by such a catch,” said the fisherman.

An exotic alien from North America first appeared on the European continent in 1877. Thanks to its well-developed ability to adapt to new living conditions, this species of perciformes successfully spread throughout the waters of Europe and now, apparently, has reached the lakes of Belarus.

The sunfish (Lepomis gibbosus) in our country is classified as an invasive fish species (undesirable), as it constitutes food competition for representatives of the local ichthyofauna and destroys their eggs. Thanks to special care for their offspring, perches of this species quickly reproduce and are gradually displacing river perch (Perca fluviatilis) from their original habitats. Sunfish is edible, but has no commercial value, since it usually grows to a size of no more than 15-20 cm.

A year ago, an uninvited guest from America was discovered in the fishing grounds of Finland, a little earlier Ukrainian ichthyologists sounded the alarm — the sunfish multiplied en masse and began to be caught in the reservoirs of Kyiv. As they said in the Finnish fisheries, the fish “eats everything that catches its eye and fits in its mouth.”

In Belarus, apparently, this is the first case of such an exotic fish being caught.