Eel slithers on angler’s line; ‘He’s coming up to get me!’

Josh Jorgensen landed a moray eel while fishing recently off Florida and discovered that posing with such a dangerous quarry is more than a little precarious.

The accompanying footage shows Jorgensen’s surprised reaction after seeing what he had reeled to the surface – “Oh my gosh, there’s an eel!” – and trying to maintain his composure as the critter slithered into a ball near his outstretched arm and hand.

“He’s coming up to get me,” Jorgensen says in the video. “He’s coming up to get me! Oh, shoot!”

Jorgensen, a producer for BlacktipH Fishing, told For The Win Outdoors that he was fishing with Pete Alonso of the New York Mets, hoping to catch snook on the St. Lucie River.

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Snook fishing was awful, but Spanish mackerel kept the anglers busy until Jorgensen broke the monotony with his rare eel catch.

“I’ve done it before, but it’s kind of crazy,” he said, adding that the eel was safely released. “You really have to watch out because they’ll take your fingers off. These things are not a joke.”

Moray eels boast incredibly powerful jaws and are considered an apex predator in their rocky ecosystems. They feed primarily on smaller fish, octopuses, squid, and crustaceans.

The footage was captured late last month by BlacktipH editor Davis Bennett. Jorgensen said that despite a remark about the length of the eel in the footage, it probably measured nearly 4 feet.

The imagery is similar to footage captured recently off California, involving a wolf eel (actually a fish) that kept slithering as the deckhand attempted to hold a pose.

As for Alonso, the Mets’ first baseman, Jorgensen said he did not catch a prized snook, but landed a personal best Spanish mackerel.

–Images courtesy of BlacktipH