What they saw was a 37-inch-long northern pike lying dead in the water with about a 3-pound sucker stuck headfirst in its jaws. The pike apparently had choked while trying to ingest the fish.

“I was like, ‘Holy cow!’ ” Collman said.

She pulled the northern pike into the boat and measured it. Only the back third of the sucker was protruding from the jaws of the pike. The head had already entered the pike’s stomach. It wasn’t clear whether the sucker had been alive when the northern tried to eat it, Collman said.

“I couldn’t pull it out or push it in,” Collman said.

Collman has the two fish — the sucker still stuck in the pike — in her freezer, she said. She plans to have the pair mounted as they were found.