Doctors baffled by man with fish that jumped down his throat

He caught a fish — in his throat.

An angler in Thailand got a closer fish encounter than he bargained for after one of the critters jumped down his gullet during a gill-fated trip.

“The chances of this happening are very low. I have never seen this kind of case before,” Sermsri Pathompanichrat, an officer at the hospital that treated the patient, told Viral Press of the accidental swallowing. The freak accident reportedly occurred on May 22 in Phatthalung province while the unidentified man was spearfishing in fresh water.

The angler had reportedly come up for air, whereupon a fish coincidentally leaped out of the water and into his mouth like an inadvertent orca feeding at SeaWorld.

Things turned serious after the 5-inch interloper wiggled its way down into the fisherman’s windpipe, cutting off his oxygen supply and causing him to clutch at his throat.

Upon noticing the fellow’s plight, samaritans rushed him to the hospital, where an X-ray revealed a spiky freshwater fish known as an Anabas lodged between his throat and nasal cavity. It had reportedly gotten stuck there while trying to swim out of the man’s nose.

Thankfully, the fisherman was able to avoid bass-phyxiation: A team of medics managed to extract the blood-covered specimen during a one-hour operation, and the patient is now recovering at the hospital following the fiasco.

“Our doctors worked hard to minimize the damage on our patient’s organs,” Pathompanichrat said. “They have successfully saved the patient.”

And while this fish tale might’ve initially seemed hard to swallow, this isn’t the first time someone has been injured by a flying fish.

This past March, a man was left in serious condition after a needlefish speared him in the neck while he was swimming in Thailand.