Italian fisherman Dino Ferrari, an expert at catching big catfish, outdid himself on Thursday when he landed an enormous 280-pounder in the Po Delta, a part of the famous Po River, the longest river in Italy at more than 400 miles.
Twin Italian brothers came within a whisker of a European record when they reeled in a catfish weighing 127kg in northern Italy’s River Po – with just a fishing rod.
The 2.7-metre long fish, believed to be one of the biggest of its kind ever caught, was snared by twin brothers Dino and Dario Ferrari.
It was reeled from the River Po on February 19th “in a fight that lasted 40 minutes,” Dino Ferrari told Corriere, adding that “nobody has ever caught such prey” through spin fishing, a technique which uses artificial bait.
“To fish these river giants, you must have patience and a lot of physical strength,” he said.
And the whopper is still swimming in the Po after the brothers let it back in following a photo-shoot that shows them chuffed to the gills with their haul.
The twins are known in the fishing world for their exceptional catfish catches.
“In over 20 years we have caught about 1,800,” Dino said.
Hungarian fisherman Attila Zsedely holds the European catfish record after he pulled a 135kg beauty out of the Po in 2010.
But the largest recorded catfish snare was a 155kg beast pulled from the Brazilian Amazon in 2009.
