Fisherman Robert Webb, from Hitchin, England, reeled in the catch of his life while on vacation in Spain, snagging a 230-pound (approx. 104-kilogram) catfish during a holiday fishing expedition.
Webb was on the final day of what had thus far been a fairly unsuccessful week-long catfishing expedition along the River Segra when he made the tremendous catch. After feeling unwell earlier in the trip, the 63-year-old decided to throw out one last line before the holiday wrapped up—and after about 90 minutes of waiting was rewarded for his last-ditch efforts.
Sure enough, the haul was worth the 40 minutes of struggling. When the four on the boat caught a glimpse of the catfish they'd brought on board, they realized that this was no ordinary catfish—and sure enough, Webb set a record with the catch.
The rare Mandarin catfish was so huge that the group’s first attempts to weigh it were unsuccessful. They first attempted to log the catch on a scale the following morning, after tying the fish to a rope and leaving it in the water to make sure it stayed alive overnight, and those first scales were maxed out when they tried to figure out just how big the fish was.
“When we first weighed it, the fish was actually too heavy and maxed-out the scales,” he said. “So after we got another set, it then read 240 but we realized it had a load of water in its mouth. The final reading of the fish was 230 pounds or 16 stone. I’m 13 stone so you can imagine how big it was.
“The fishing operators reckoned the fish was around 40- to 45-years-old and was one of the babies of the original Mandarin Catfish that were placed in the river back in 1974 by a German man doing an experiment.”
Mandarin catfish are also called Wels catfish, which can grow up to 16 feet in length and can weigh over 300 pounds (approx. 136 kg) during their potential 50-year lifespan. What makes a Mandarin so unique is that they are part albino, which gives them the distinct look that this particular fish has—and makes them so rare to find.
Webb’s catch was so massive that it set a record for the largest catfish ever caught in Europe. But although he was all smiles when he posed with this one before tossing it back into the water to swim away, he still has his sights set on possibly even bigger fish down the line.
“If I can afford it, I'd like to go to the River Poe or to Thailand and fish there but if I wasn’t to catch anything again, I would still be happy,” he said, referencing a region where the catfish can grow up to 500 or 600 pounds (approx. 227 or 272 kg). For now, though, he’s happy with what he’s already managed to accomplish in his local region.
