A British man has caught a monster stingray that could be the largest freshwater fish ever landed — a whopping 772 pounds, the British newspaper The Telegraph reported Thursday. Ian Welch spent 90 minutes fighting the huge creature. It took 13 men to bring it into the boat, the newspaper said. The gargantuan venomous ray measured seven feet wide by seven feet long, not counting its deadly stinger, which measured 10 feet. Welch, a freshwater biologist, had been visiting Thailand to help with a stingray-tagging program when he landed the fish on the Maeklong River. Welsh, 45, told the Telegraph that he was nearly pulled over the side of the boat when the stingray took his bait.
“It dragged me across the boat and would have pulled me in had my colleague not grabbed my trousers,” he said. “It was like the whole earth had just moved. I knew it was going to a big one. It buried itself on the bottom and the main fight was trying to get it off the floor.” Welsh told the Telegraph that when the stingray was reeled in “there was just silence because everyone was just in awe of this thing.” Welch and the team released the stingray, which turned out to be a pregnant female.
What? They released it so it could go back to roaming around in that river? Don’t they realize that one of those things killed Steve Irwin, the Crocodile hunter? That one wasn’t nearly as big as this one!
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