A giant conger eel bigger than the angler who caught it has been pulled from the River Mersey!
West Derby angler Colin Perkins had his rod broken by the five foot eel, which weighed 17-and-a-half pounds, as he battled to land the monster fish.
The eel took half a mackerel off the Woodside shore of the river last Friday and took four local anglers to net the catch.
Read more: Merseyside's weirdest creatures from 15ft creature to the Fazakerley crocodile
A surprised, but delighted, Colin said: "That was my first ever conger, I'll probably never get another that size. Typically you only see one or two of these monsters every year, this was a welcomed surprise! To add to the drama it snapped my rod!"
Colin added: "I am 5' 10 but my mate is 5'2 and it was the same length as him! There was a really great group of anglers on the quayside, Steven Jones, Liam Joseph and Chris Baxter who helped net it up the wall, where we unhooked it, weighed it and returned it straight away without delay."
Colin believes the river bed around the Woodside/Seacombe ferry terminals make it the perfect environment for eels.
He added: "The area there is quite snaggy, with lots of mud and rocks that makes it a perfect home for the eels.
"But the Mersey in general is fishing its socks off at the moment. There are a lot of smoothounds and bull huss, of which there was a 10lb huss and a 15lb hound recently caught.
"These are still about due to the late summer and the slow onset of winter, so hopefully there's a few good weeks of fishing to come.
Liverpool Echo angling stories
"The eel was caught on mackerel on a wire rig supplied by a local business, The Rig Shack in Bromborough. The Mersey really does continue thrive. It's cleaner than ever and personally, I think the warmer changing weather is having an affect on the species coming in."
Big though Colin's catch was, it's still a long way short of the UK record.
The biggest conger ever caught from the shore is a gargantuan 68lb 8oz caught at Devil's Point, Plymouth in 1992 by M. Larkin.
