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If there’s one thing I can say for certain about northern pike, it’s that they’re fierce predators that will eat just about anything they can fit in their mouths. This shocking video recorded by Roger Niesen back in 2020 drives home that point. 

According to ViralHog, Niesen was fishing with his buddies Andy and Jeremiah on the Mississippi in Lacrosse, Wisconsin on January 1, 2020, when they caught an impressive pike. But when they got the pike on a fillet table is when the fishing story got really interesting—and the anglers captured the sequence of events on camera. You won’t be able to look away from this video. See it for yourself below. 

“[We] wanted to take a video of what we thought was a turtle inside this fish’s stomach,” explained Niesen. “What we found out once we filleted it open blew us away.”

Despite reportedly having been kept on ice for five hours, the pike had a live bluegill in its stomach. After the anglers sliced it free of the pike’s belly, it started flopping around on the table.  “It’s still alive!” exclaims one of the anglers in the video. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it!”

Read Next: Watch a Killer Whale Charge a Small Fishing Boat

This incident was far from the first time something strange has been found inside a pike’s stomach. Check out three similarly shocking instances below. 

Watch a Fisherman Cut a Live Perch of a Pike’s Belly

Watch a Man Find a Whole Bratwurst Out of a Dead Pike

Watch an Angler Pull a Walleye Out of a Northern’s Mouth

Sage Marshall
Sage Marshall

Sage Marshall joined Field & Stream as an editorial intern in 2018, when he worked at the publication’s former office in Manhattan. His desk-mate was a mounted warthog. After graduating from college, he worked as a freelance journalist for two years before returning to the F&S team full-time in 2021 as the brand’s News Editor.

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