Ok; it could also be a large-mouth bass.
Interesting that several stumps in the Bonny Lake forest I visited yesterday looked like fish. This shot has been processed a bit differently, emphasizing the sea of red ‘flotsam’ (last year’s withered ferns). Shot on the same visit as the previous stumps, and also taken with the Zeiss Otus 100mm f/1.4 lens and Sony α1 camera.
A key difference: a small aperture was used, f/2.5, so more of the area around the stump is in focus. The sharpness of this lens is quite evident in the photo. It’s one of my favorites.
Here’s another shot in the series; this time, the aperture is much wider, at f/1.6. The depth of focus is much more limited. This normally isolates the subject more effectively. However, in this case it also blurs some of the features near the stump that are not quite in the same line. I think this makes the image less clear, but I include it here to show that sometimes the usual advice doesn’t quite work out, and you need to reconsider the shot from first principles.
Another problem with the photo above is that the sun came out, briefly, and created a much greater contrast between the subject and ground. Normally, this is helpful in drawing attention to the subject. But in the case that makes the subject very dark, and it’s harder to see those details.
The red-shift is also missing in this second shot, and it shows how the red shift helped to reveal the more subject twists and turns of the stump.
It amazes me how different two apparently similar photographs can be when you look at the way the environment changes—but the same thing can happen simply by changing parameters for the photo (aperture, shutter speed, ISO).