As far as fish tales go, this one is bloody good. And a Michigan boy has a bite mark to prove it.

Billy Balinski's leg wound is evidence of a northwest Ontario muskie attack that's considered rare, even for what one expert describes as the "zany" species of fish which swims and strikes quickly with big teeth.

At Vermilion Bay, Ont., the fish's nip on the 12-year-old's shin is continuing to make waves a couple of weeks after it happened.

"You have a better chance of getting hit by lightning," Gord Bastable, co-owner of Vermilion Bay Lodge, said yesterday of the fish bite on the boy in Eagle Lake at his fishing facility.

"It's so rare that a fish would bite somebody. You read about it once in a while in an outdoor magazine or something. Muskie are hard enough to catch on a lure -- never mind by dangling a body part in the water."

While swimming in three feet of water on Aug. 3 with a half-dozen kids at the lodge, Balinski felt a painful tug on his right shin.

He emerged from the lake to find his leg bleeding from a four-inch cut in the shape of a fish's jaw.

Other children saw a muskie at least a metre long swimming away.

"He was crying a little when coming out of the water," said Bastable, who helped bandage the wound.

Charles Weiss, who writes extensively on the fish species for outdoor-related publications, said the bite is a fascinating example of the "drama" of the "muskie-eat-muskie world" in many Canadian lakes.

Muskie, he said, can easily swim 25 km/h "in a sudden burst of a tail-kick" while exhibiting a "sinister" look.

"They're ambush predators. That's how they feed. That's how they live," Weiss said from his home in Toronto.

"And they have three rows of teeth on the roof of the mouth, and dagger-like teeth on the lower jaw. This fish is like a meat-shredder."

KNOWN WORLDWIDE

Eagle Lake is known worldwide for muskie fishing, he noted, adding "there are monster muskies" in that water body -- though the species isn't seen as much in Manitoba.

A muskie weighing more than 60 pounds was caught in Eagle Lake in 1939, and one of nearly the same size the following year.

The Balinski family couldn't be reached at their home in Richmond, Mich., for comment.

Bastable figures the approximately 20-pound fish mistook Billy's leg for another water creature that would otherwise make a quick lunch.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/08/17/4425546-sun.html

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