After a 90-minute fight, it looks like a British couple, Shaun and Chloe Ing, will be the holders of the new UK catfish record with a fish that was more than 8 feet long and weighed 150 pounds caught at the Chigboro Fisheries in Essex, a renowned catfish spot.
The current record is a 143-pound fish nicknamed “scare” that was caught in the same waters in 2024 by Darren Reitze, which will likely be replaced by the Ing fish once it’s certified by the British Record Fish Committee.
Of course, we’re not talking about the kind of catfish Americans are used to — nobody’s noodling a monster like this. These are wels catfish, a much larger species of catfish that are native to various parts of central, southern, and eastern Europe. They were later introduced to Western Europe as game fish. Today, they can be found from the United Kingdom all the way east to China and as far south as Turkey. Currently, it’s the largest freshwater fish in all of Europe and Western Asia, aside from some sturgeon species in Eastern Europe.
They’re popular because of their size and because they fight like hell — in short — wels catfish are great sport.
According to a post from the Chigboro Fisheries on Facebook, the fish was caught a couple months ago, but was only recently made public.
“A couple months back something happened on the complex for Shaun and Chloe! 150lb catfish. 8 foot plus. 1 hour 30 plus of graft and knowing how to play big fish. This is hopefully going to be the new catfish record. A different catfish to the last record. So that’s now 2 UK records (hopefully) we have,” the fishery posted.
“PS. This was caught on [a] 15lb mainline and a size 6 hook. So it can be done and I know there’s a pedalo in the background. That’s the new lake its going into,” the post continued.
Wels get big. Like, freakishly big. While the Ing catfish is huge, the world record wels catfish according to the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) beats it by quite a bit — it measured 9.4 feet in length and weight 280 pounds. That fish was caught in 2023 by an Italian angler, Alessandro Biancardi, on the River Po in the Lombardy region of Italy. It only took the top spot by 1.6 inches.
Back in 2009, a big wels cat made headlines when a British schoolgirl, Jessica Wanstall from Kent, pulled it from Spain’s Ebro river while fishing with her dad.
Typically, adult wels catfish are between 3.5 and 5.5 feet in length and weight between 30 ande 45 pounds — anything over 6.5 feet is fairly rare. Once a wels gets into the 7-foot zone, they can weigh up to 145 pounds or bigger, like the Ing catch, but they only grow that big if the environment is just right. They thrive in a mild climate, where there is a lack of competition, and a hearty food supply — pretty standard.
The UK Record Catfish Fight and Some Ruined Chinese Takeout
Shaun said they got the bite at about 7:50 p.m., just as a delivery driver dropped off some Chinese food for dinner.
“The reel on the rod almost set on fire, it was going so fast. It was absolute panic stations,” Shaun told the Daily Mail.
Shaun told the Angling Times that he and Chloe work as bailiffs at the fishery and were in the process of moving the catfish from Maywater Lake to start a new catfish lake on the same complex.
“We had already recorded a 143-pound catfish from Maywater and knew it wasn’t the biggest fish left in the lake. That cat was just over 6ft long, but we knew there was a monster over 8ft yet to be landed,” he said.
“I’m a carp angler at heart, but I know how effective solid bags are at catching catfish. Fishing from the long chuck swim, I wrapped my rod to 24 wraps and cast tight to the island, using a solid bag packed with pellets and a small yellow hook bait.”
After it hit, the fish peeled line like nothing he’d ever felt before.
“I just knew it had to be the big cat we were after and was fully expecting a long fight,” he said. That fight would go on for just over an hour and a half. And it was a true battle.
“Every time I gained line, the fish took it back.”
Shaun didn’t realize how big the fish really was until it finally surfaced — and then he immediately realized he was going to need a bigger landing net. It took two friends with slings to ultimately land the monster fish.
Okay, great. But how do you weigh a fish like that accurately when it could be a UK record?
The fishery owners had a solution: they brought out a body bag that they’d used as a Halloween prop. The first attempt resulted in a broken tripod and a straightened hook.
With a beefier tripod, they recorded a total weight, including the slings, of 164.1 pounds. Once the slings were removed, they were weighed at 14 pounds 1 ounce, leaving exactly 150 pounds as the total weight of what is likely the new UK record catfish.
“After taking some photos and videos, we carefully moved the catfish to its new home,” Shaun said. After all that, their Chinese food had become untouched leftovers.
