Sunny Side Up
If you have ever driven across a bridge over a shallow, slow-moving river, you may have seen what appeared to be a school of dead fish. If you were in New Jersey at the time, that's probably what it was. Otherwise, it is more likely that you saw sunfish sunning themselves.
Yes, it is hard to believe that the idea of lying around for hours basking in the sun originally came from fish. Then again, if you have ever talked to a leathery sun-worshipper, this may not sound so far-fetched. Like, you know? I mean, like, you know, really.
For fish, sunfish actually have a pretty good life. Needless to say, this is not due to any particular intelligence on their part. They're still fish. But you have never heard of anybody flying to the Canadian wilderness to go fly-fishing for sunfish. If you have, you should probably give them a wide berth, as you don't want to be anywhere nearby when they finally snap.
Sunfish have developed several anti-fishing characteristics. First, most of them are only about five inches long. Stuffing and mounting a trophy sunfish consists of jamming a couple of cotton balls down its throat and sticking it on a toothpick. This will most likely not impress anyone, except possibly aquarium owners. "When my goldfish died, I just flushed him." they will say. "I never thought of mounting him."
Sunfish are in fact in the same family as goldfish, and they are much the same color. However, they are also related to piranha. I know this because in a local lake where I used to go swimming there is a rocky submerged sandbar you can swim out to. If you stand (about waist deep) out there on a sunny day, you will soon be surrounded by sunfish. You can watch as they form a circle around you.
Then one after the other they will dart in and nibble your toes. Sometimes they will bump your ankles, but they seem most interested in the toes. It is truly an eerie experience, but also strangely enjoyable. If sunfish had teeth, I'm sure I would enjoy it less, and they would probably enjoy it more. They seem to find it frustrating and swim away after a while. Being fish, they have about a ten-second memory, so they are back very soon.
I'm not sure if this habit technically falls under the heading of anti-fishing techniques, but it certainly works that way on me. I figure if I don't try to catch and eat them, they won't need to develop teeth to eat me. This is my own personal take on evolution and survival of the fittest: Leave nature alone, and it won't have to find a way to kill and eat you.
Sunfish also have a spiny fin on their back that makes it very difficult to grab them to take them off a fishing hook. This is another reason no one fishes for them deliberately, but sunfish will bite on even a bare hook with no bait on it just to spite fishermen. They also put up quite a fight when being reeled in, making you think you have a nice bass on the line. Then you pull in a four-inch sunfish who smiles at you, fins you a few times, then waits to be thrown back.
If a frustrated fisherman finally decides to try to eat one of the little buggers, he will be frustrated further. Aside from being half head, sunfish have a double row of bones. Thus an average size sunfish contains exactly 2.7 grams of edible material, counting the tail - 1.8 without.
So the next time you look down from a bridge and see the sunfish sunning themselves, remember their cousins the piranhas and wave to them politely. And make a note never to fish anywhere in the vicinity.