Big man lands muckle fish

A CUNNINGSBURGH angler has fished his way into the record books after catching a six foot long ling in waters 130 metres deep north of Shetland.

James Isbister was fishing with local fish tour operators Northmavine Charters at lunchtime on Saturday around a wreck six miles north of Muckle Flugga, the most northerly point in the UK.

It took the marine engineer with local firm Ocean Kinetics almost half an hour to land the enormous fish, that weighed in at 67.46lbs when it was weighed at the Lerwick fish market, a full 10lbs more than the previous record set 23 years ago.

“I put my tackle over the side. It ran to the bottom and immediately I got a strike. I knew it was a big fish,” the 38 year old recalled.

“It had a big fight, it took out line all the time. It took me about 20 or 30 minutes to get it up.

“When it surfaced, I thought: ‘My god, look at the size of that fish’. It took two of us to hook it and get it over the side of the boat.”

The fish had to be folded in half to fit in Isbister’s mother’s freezer where it will remain until it has been formally identified as a new record by the British Record Fish Committee.

The Natural History Museum in London has also expressed an interest in the fish, which will be transported south as soon as possible.

Isbister, who is 6’5” tall, said the fish was nearly as big as he was, but was landed with a home made lure put together at the dining room table the night before with his two young sons Danny and Robbie.

He told BBC Radio Shetland: “The night before I went out I thought I would make a new rig. My two youngest boys sat there and helped me, and they handed me bits from my tacklebox and said: ‘Dad you tie that on and put this on’.

“We played around with it for about an hour and then we got the perfect rig.”

The fish was caught using a shamino 20/30LB Beast Master rod, 30A tld 2 speed reel, 50lb braid, green muppet and half a mackerel as bait.