The creature has scales, jagged teeth, swims and moves on land, and can measure more than a metre long.

And Amy Merry thought she found one.

While fishing in the Welland Canal on the long weekend, she reeled in a lunker that gave her a good fight — and, at first, she had no idea what it was.

“I just didn’t know what to think of it,” she said. “All I know is that it’s big and it has a lot of teeth and the hook’s right at the edge of the mouth and I’m not reaching in there.”

After consulting fishing books, Merry thought she had a northern snakehead, an invasive species to Canadian waters.

Although authorities later identified it as a bowfin, a fish native to that area, the Great Lakes are at risk of a future snakehead invasion.

So says Becky Cudmore of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Centre of Expertise for Aquatic Risk Assessment, located in Burlington.

“In the U.S., as those populations of invasive species grow into bigger numbers, they tend to move to other areas,” she said. “We’re concerned but we’re not on red alert.”

Cudmore says the snakehead will eat any fish, such as tilapia, that is smaller in size. It can bite a fish in half or take chunks out of them.

There are 36 different snakehead species globally, but only the northern snakehead would survive Canada’s cool waters, she said.

In a 2005 study, Cudmore concluded the risk of the fish coming to Canada, including the southern Great Lakes basin, was “high.”

After the study’s publication, the Ontario government banned the sale of live snakeheads. The creatures used to be sold in live fish markets or for aquariums.

There have been no cases of live snakeheads in Canadian waters — just a dead one found in Quebec, Cudmore said. It was a tropical variety and could not survive the cold water.

Established populations in the hundreds of fish are now found across the U.S., including New York, Maryland, Virginia and Arkansas, Cudmore said.

In New York , environmental authorities have experimented with fish poison and electrocution to rid them from lakes, ponds and even ditches of rain water, she said.

If anyone here spots a snakehead, they should contact environmental authorities, she said.

“Prevention is key. The sooner we know about (the fish here), the sooner we can do something.”

via TheSpec.com – Local – Odd catch highlights fish fears.