By JAMIE PYATT
Published: 25 Feb 2009
BRITISH angler Ian Welch has landed a world record with this monster a giant stingray which is the biggest freshwater fish ever caught using a rod and line.
Ian hooked the FIFTY FIVE STONE beast which nearly pulled him over the side of the boat several times during a 90 MINUTE battle before he landed it.
It took THIRTEEN grown men to heave the fish which is the size of a garden shed out of the water.
Weighing 771lbs it smashed the previous record of 646lbs for a huge catfish caught in 2005.
Ian, a freshwater biologist, had been visiting Thailand to help with a stingray tagging programme when he hooked the denizen of the deep on the Maeklong River.
Dragged
The 45-year-old nearly disappeared over the side of the fishing boat when the specimen took his bait, which was a snakehead fish.
He said: It dragged me across the boat and would have pulled me in had my colleague not grabbed my trousers - it was like the whole earth had just moved.
I knew it was going to be a big one.
It buried itself on the bottom and the main fight was trying to get it off the floor.
I tried with every ounce of power but it just would not budge.
After half an hour my arms began shaking and after an hour my legs went.
Another 30 minutes went by and then I put a glove on and physically pulled the line with gritted teeth and somehow I found the reserves to shift the fish.
Once the stingray was off the bottom 11.5 stone Ian, from Aldershot, Hants, managed to lift it 30ft to the surface relatively easily.
He said: As soon as we saw it there was just silence because everyone was just in awe of this thing.
That line from the film Jaws came to mind about needing a bigger boat because we had to get it to the shore to tag it.
The group managed to put a 12ft wide net under the fish and towed it to the bank where it was weighed on a giant set of industrial scales used in the tagging programme.
Ian added: It took 13 people to lift it into a large paddling pool we had set up in order to tag it and take DNA samples.
I was absolutely exhausted afterwards and did very little for the rest of the day and just celebrated it with a cold beer.
Its body was 7ft long and 7ft wide its tail measured 10ft and its lethal venomous barb had to be wrapped in cloth while it was out of the water.
The giant freshwater stingray is listed as a vulnerable species on the International Union for Conservation of Natures red list.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2268017.ece
