Press
At a bathing lake in Linz, Austria, a teenager pulls a huge predatory fish out of the water. He is actually only fishing for carp.
Linz – Raphael Poik wanted to spend some nice hours fishing on his local lake in Austria. Like he always did when he fished with his uncle on Lake Pichlinger in Linz. Every now and then he pulls a large carp out of the water. But this time fate had something extraordinary in store for the teenager: a huge catfish.
“Actually, I’m just a carp angler, but I didn’t want to withhold the bycatch from you,” joked the 17-year-old at InstagramIn the picture, Poik is holding an enormous catfish. He is beaming. No wonder, because this predatory fish is not his usual catch. “I couldn’t believe it at all. It was only the second catfish in my life, and one like that,” said Raphael in an interview with heute.at overwhelmed.
“What came up was unbelievable”: Teenager overwhelmed by giant catfish
Raphael caught his “dream fish” on June 30th. That Sunday he went to the lake with his uncle as he often did. At around six in the morning he had the bite that would make him a local legend. The fish pulled line from the reel. “It pulled 300 meters down,” he said. OÖNewsThe teenager, who is doing an apprenticeship as a chef, had wound up 600 metres.
“I immediately noticed that I had something big on my line,” said Poik. He had a good fight with the fish, even with his waders in the water. “After a fight lasting almost an hour, it finally gave in, and what came up was unbelievable,” he said on Instagram. The catfish measured 2.17 meters. Weighing it was difficult because of its size and weight. But the catfish, as the fish species is also called, weighed at least 85 kilograms. The largest catfish documented was 2.85 meters long. But a Angler in the Czech Republic caught a magnificent specimen.
Size of catfish shocks: Some bathers no longer want to swim in the lake
Passers-by and bathers were amazed when they saw the catfish in the hands of the angler and his uncle. “Many people didn’t even know that there were such big fish in Lake Pichlinger. “A few of them said straight away that they would never go into the lake again,” said Poik, amused. Catfish can grow very large, but are not dangerous to people. They only have small, blunt teeth, but occasionally eat ducks.
The fish was allowed to return to freedom, like on a Watch the uncle’s video is. First, Poik stroked the catfish, then he put it back in the water. At first it didn’t move for a while, but then it swam back into the depths of the lake. After amateur fishermen caught a large catfish in an Alpine lake, they received a heavy fine. (mt)
#Teenager #pulls #giant #predatory #fish #Austrian #lake #scaring #passersby