Express.co.uk first report this huge catch: Dawn Hull was with husband Adey and son Dan at a lake in southern Thailand when she netted the nine-foot South American arapaima. The angler, of Peatling Parva, near Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, has been told it set an International Game Fishing Association record for the largest freshwater fish ever caught by a woman.
Dawn, who started fishing with her dad when she was five, said: “I said to Adey ‘I’ve got something really big here’. I landed it myself. It took about 25 minutes.
“It was fabulous. The biggest fish I’d caught before was about 10lb.”
Guides from the resort helped her lug the giant fish, which weighs as much as a filled fridge freezer, to shore.
She said: “It was hot and there was sweat dripping off my head.
“I got into the water with it to have my picture taken and they had to roll it on its side.
“It’s nice to think I’m the first woman in the world to have landed a freshwater fish that size.
“It didn’t sink in for a few hours. It was when I was floating round the pool and I thought no other woman had ever caught a fish even near the weight of that one.
“A woman came up to me at the pool and said ‘you’re the legend of the lake’.”
He said of Dawn’s catch: “Stuart Gillham, who owns the resort, said it was the biggest freshwater fish ever caught and landed by a female angler.
The largest freshwater fish ever caught in the world is believed to be a 106stone Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, landed by Ken Fraser in Aulds Cove, Novia Scotia in 1979.
A 10stone catfish – less than one third the weight of that dragged in by Dawn – was believed to be the biggest freshwater fish to be pulled out of British waters when it was caught by James Jones at at Oak Lakes Fishery, Essex in 2012.