Killer piranha stalk Folkestone pond

And the IT angle is?

Oh... angling. I get it.

Well done!

Almost every report about piranhas includes the standard phrase "skeletonise a cow" somewhere, and yet you managed to avoid it.

First big cats in the countryside

and now piranha in our ponds.. it really is a jungle out there.

I'll get me coat, it's the one with the safari colours on it.

"Felt an almighty tug on his rod"

Did he also get an almighty tug on his fishing pole as well?

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

Grrrr

I would be on the hunt for the person who dumps these nasty fish into ponds.

If those fish killed anyone I loved then as punsihment I'd find the man and push him in there.

What no Paris? I must correct that..

Why? Do I really need to spell it out?

Chilly Willy Piranah?

Of course the fact that these fish live in tropcial water with an average temperature of 24-26c might put a bit of a damper on things when winter comes?

Reminds me....

of the time an aquarium (shop) went bust in St. Helens (Merseyside) and the guy dumped all his tropical fish in the "Hotties" (part of the Leeds / Liverpool canal that ran past the hot water outlet from the Pilkington glass works)

This made for some very exciting angling when I were a lad, a large variety of exotic fishies providing lots of almighty tugs on my rod down by that canal

At last!

We can boast about dangerous flora and fauna in the English countryside! Before all you could say when talking to Johnny Foreigner was that we had some rather dubious sightings of what might have been a large black cat but could have well been a large dog. Or maybe you could have mentioned the rather pathetic adder... they can give a right nasty nip you know? And lastly there's hedgehogs (very nasty to stand on one), irate badgers, and, of course, the fearsome miffed squirrel.

no they won't breed

this will have been released by some idiot who didn't want his pet fish any more - there's probably only one anyway

regardless of how many there are, they'll all be dead by this time next year as they are tropical fish from the Amazon basin - they won't survive winter in the UK

Just one question

Nowhere in the story or in the comments so far has anyone asked the most important question.

Does it go with chips?

Hand grenade..the perfect fishing tool for Piranha

How Fast Can You Swim?

Wonder if this is just a PR publicity stunt for the upcoming Piranha 3D due out this year? Coincidence? Hmmmm,

Yes but....

You too can eat Piranha...the worm has turned!! Catch em and eat em, they'll die in winter anyway.

Piranhas aren't dangerous

"where gangs of them regularly strip the flesh from their victims in a terrifying frenzy of teeth and foaming water"

I hope that's Sun hyperbole and you don't believe EVERYTHING you read.

Bizarrely enough, the 'frenzy' myth started with Theodore Roosevelt:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirhana#Theodore_Roosevelt.27s_description

Typical over exaggeration...

Fishermen huh!!! I'd be highly surprised if a single Pirhana could have taken his arm off lest it be on big mutant of a motherf**ing fish. OK, yes, maybe he could have gotten a fairly deep cut from the teeth, but the real threat of the Pirhana comes when there is a school of them... and only then that they are all hungry.

Incidentally, I had a nice tug on my rod last night ;-)

... or by checking some tedious facts ...

... we'd realise there's really very little threat, even from the infamous Red-Bellied Piranha, whose threat is massively overstated and sensationalised.

I wouldn't worry about the Pirhana

.....it's the Candiru you have to worry about... you can't catch 'em in a net remember.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candiru

BTW... there any pubs open near this lake ?

Nasty little native species.

We have our own native nasties:-

Lesser Weever (Echiichthys vipera) and Greater Weever (Trachinus draco) . They inhabit sandy beaches around the UK where they lay half buried waiting for prey. Unfortunately they also get trodden on by bathers who are impaled on their venomous dorsal spines.

The Lesser Weever is the more venomous of the two.

Some years ago I saw someone "stung" in the hand by one of these. I was fishing off a local pier when a tourist's kid caught one. A local recognised it immediately (as did I) and told the lads father to cut his line. The muppet refused to believe something that venomous lived in UK waters and tried to unhook it, his hand only protected by a piece of rag. Needless to say the Weever's spines easily penetrated the rag, and his hand.

First there was an "ouch", followed by a few expletives which, as the venom took effect, escalated into screams of agony and blubbering.....

Yes, they really are that bad.

a fishy tale

I met a bloke once who told me a bucket of pirhana fish were discarded, presumably by a pet owner unable to afford his butcher's bills, just downstream of the power station condenser outlet on the river Severn at Ironbridge once. The water there was so warm they loved it. In order to kill them off they had to turn off the power station for a few days.

Human eaters or not...

...should they survive and breed (I know there is not much of a chance, but stranger things already happened), they could really seriously damage the whole ecosystem.Remember when this kind of fish ...can´t figure out the name...was introduced on purpose to Lake Victoria, effectively wiping out pretty much everything that lived in it and around it? Just saying. Whether they are rabbits, or tilapias, animals generally should stay where they belong.

Lucky fella

In case he's reading this. Chop up some tomatoes and a couple of shallots. Put some butter in a pan, let it melt over low heat and make a bed with half of the tomatoes and shallots. Place the cleaned piranha on the bed add salt, pepper and a bit of parsley then cover with the remaining tomato/shallot mixture. Add a few oz. Pinot Gris, cover until fish is done. Remove piranha from pan and reduce remaining mixture. Pour reduction on plate, top with piranha, serve with yu choy and rice with sweet potato.

Love those Euphemisms.

For once my work hasn't blocked out gutter based comments infesting TheRegister.