A schoolboy from Kent has set a new record after catching a fish almost the size of him.
Callum Pettit, 11, pulled a giant seven stone carp out of a lake near Reims in France, the biggest ever for a junior angler.
It took 20 minutes to reel the fish in and when it was put on the scales, it dawned on him and dad Stuart that he was bound for the record books.
At 96lbs 10ozs, the whopping catch was only a few pounds lighter than Callum and almost twice the size of his dad’s personal best catch in 30 years of angling.
The fish, nicknamed Big Girl, went for Callum’s special banoffee-flavoured bait.
It was only when Stuart, 40, went to lift the fish into a landing net by the side of the bank that it dawned on him it was one of the biggest carp fish in Europe.
Other anglers gathered around to watch the momentous catch.
A video taken on Stuart’s GoPro camera captured the moment Callum saw it for the first time.
Stuart, from Ashford, Kent, said: ‘It is a once in a lifetime fish and Callum has caught it aged 11. Where does he go from here?
‘He would have more of a chance of winning the lottery than catching a bigger carp than that.’
Callum said: ‘I couldn’t believe how big it was and my arms were really aching afterwards.’
The youngster took up fishing with his dad as a toddler and his previous biggest catch was a mirror carp that weighed 29lbs.
Dad and son were sleeping in a bivvy ten when a rod alarm went off at about 6am on a trip postponed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Stuart said: ‘With bigger fish they don’t charge off around the lake, they are like a dead weight. All Callum could do was hold on.
‘He played the fish for about 20 minutes, slowly pulling it up and winding it towards him.
‘We didn’t have any idea of the size of it until we got it into the net and even then we thought it could have been a 60lbs or 70lbs fish.
‘The owner of the fishery came out and identified it as the Big Girl. It was the biggest fish I have ever set eyes on.’
The world record for a carp stands at 112lbs 14oz for a mirror carp caught at a fishery in Hungary by Dutchman Michel Schoenmakers in 2018.
And the biggest carp ever caught by a British angler is a 105lbs 14oz mirror specimen by Ian Burton at the same lake in 2019.
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