Jack Clements thought he'd seen just about every type of fish there is in Utah Lake.
He was wrong.
Clements, 62, was fishing in Provo harbor across from the boat rental area Thursday when he hooked what he believed to be a large bluegill.
As Clements reached down to take the hook out of its mouth, the Provo man's son advised him against it.
"My son says, 'You better watch it. That's a piranha, Dad,'" Clements said.
Sure enough, the bluegill look-alike had teeth.
"It's really weird because it had teeth like a human," he said.
The fish was about 13 inches long, 8 inches tall and 2 inches wide and weighed as estimated 1 1/2 pounds, Clements said.
"It was definitely a piranha," he said.
The other two members of the fishing party agreed, as did the three Brigham Young University biology students who were nearby conducting a survey of the fish in Utah Lake, Clements said.
Knowing he was not allowed to keep the fish, Clements called the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, which sent an officer to claim it.
"(The officer) said it was a piranha also," Clements said.
As of Monday afternoon, the DWR had not yet determined whether Clements' catch was in fact a piranha or a "piranha-like" fish such as the pacu, which on occasion have been pulled from Utah Lake and the Jordan River.
"Every few years, it seems like we have someone who catches this kind of fish," said Scott Root, DWR outreach manager.
Root said he had not seen the fish and likely wouldn't be able to examine it until today.
No matter what it is, the fish was likely dumped into the lake by someone trying to get rid of an illegal fish, he said.
"There's probably not a lot of them in there," Root said.
Even if the fish turns out to be a piranha, Clements says he won't shy away from wading into the waters of Utah Lake, where he's fished since he was 8 years old.
"They don't bother you unless you're cut or bleeding or something like that," he said. "The natives in South America swim with them."
E-mail: jpage@desnews.com