14 DAY TRIAL // The largest fish you will find in a river is beluga, a sturgeon living in the Danube and Volga rivers. Today, overfishing and poaching made it impossible to catch such huge beasts up to 8.6 m (28 ft) long and weighing as much as 2,700 kg (5,940 lbs), but individuals up to 5.5 m (18 ft) long and weighing hundreds of kg are still found.
So, maybe this is a small fish compared to a fully-grown beluga, but this is what two British anglers caught in a Canadian river: an 100-year-old white sturgeon monster fish weighing over 225 kg (500 lbs), after a battle of over an hour.
Nick Calleya, 36, from Cubert, Cornwall, and George Carstairs, from Scotland, made the capture while angling from a boat on the Fraser River in British Columbia (southwestern Canada). The 10 ft (3 m) long giant was snared by a rod and line using salmon eggs as bait.
"We hooked on to it and it shot off. The boat was anchored so we quickly pulled it up and sped after it. George is quite a small guy so I had to grab him and hold him down because the fish was lifting him off his seat," said Calleya. The anglers took turns to hold the rod when their exhausted arms were on the point of letting their prey escape, during the over 60 minutes struggle with the monster. All the time, their fishing guide was overseeing the struggle, attempting to keep pace with the fish.
"We were constantly going up and down the river for half a mile or so. Every now and then, the line would go dead and the fish would come back and zoom upstream. We managed to take it into a shallow spot further down stream and George jumped out and lassoed its tail and held it," said Calleya.
While the anglers recorded their moment of glory on pictures and videos, the guide microchipped the fish as part of a conservation research project before the monster was released back into the river.
"The guide said it was the best part of 100 years old. Although there are much bigger monsters in the river, he said it was the biggest one he had seen for more than a year."