Ribbonfish Are Real Life Aliens Among Us

Advertisement

Did you know that there are animals in the United States swimming around looking like some type of Sci-fi creature?  Its not even just looks, check out the way its fin gyrates on top of its body - completely absurd.  The movement truly looks like some type of CGI animation. 

The creature in my hands is known as a Ribbonfish or more specifically an "Atlantic Cutlassfish".  There are a lot of different forms of Cutlassfish across the world and they can live up to 1900 feet under the ocean, and they certainly look like it!!! One of the most stunning aspects of encountering this swimming terror was that we were Tarpon fishing in 6 feet of water in a little lagoon surrounded by trees, alligators, and manatees!  As someone who has fished a majority of their life in the Florida Keys and Missouri, I didn't think this mini sea monster was in the realm of possibilities at all until it charged up and waxed my bait right before my eyes.

The fangs on this fish are cartoonish looking. When it first came up on my live mullet, it sawed it in half right in front of my eyes.  I pulled the bait back up on the boat and was like "wait a second, what?".  It was like magic - "POOF!" and half the live fish had been cut away like a knife through hot butter.  It took me a minute to process this metal belt looking animal with a torture chamber for a mouth.

Believe it or not, as bizarre as these things look, most fisherman see them as BAIT!  Kingfish look at this thing like a bag of sour patch kids.  Just make sure you use a stinger rig since the baitfish in this case is in the shape of a yard stick! 

Advertisement

Check out some more pictures of different Cutlassfish, they are EXTREMELY COOL!