A British fisherman has managed to catch a koi carp – possibly hybridised with another specimen of this cyprinid species – that could be more than forty years old and weighed more than 30 kilos. Andy Hackett, as the 42-year-old fisherman is called, found the specimen in the Bluewater Lake in the Champagne region of France.
“I always knew The Carrot – as he nicknamed the fish because of its colour – was there, but I never thought I would catch it,” Hackett said after the catch, according to the Daily Mail. “I knew it was a big fish when it took my hook and moved from side to side and up and down. Then it surfaced 30 to 40 metres away and I saw it was orange,” he added.
The specimen is twice the size of an orange koi carp caught by Italian Raphael Biagini in southern France in 2010 and weighs 13 kilograms more than what was considered the world’s largest goldfish, caught in Minnesota in 2019 by Jason Fugate.
Lake manager Jason Cowler said the caught specimen “is in excellent health condition”. “It was brilliant to catch it, but it was also pure luck,” he said.
Rare koi royal carp caught in August 2022 in Spain
The Aragonese angler Javier Jariod, 21 years old and from Caspe, caught last 26th August, in the Mequinenza reservoir (Zaragoza), a spectacular koi carp (Cyprinus carpio koi) royal with its characteristic orange spots that weighed 11 kilos. Afterwards, he told Jara y Sedal about the incredible experience of what has already become his best carpfishing session to date.
