The UK's fisheries are home to all kinds of weird and wonderful miniature fish species, one of which is the ruffe.
To highlight just how small they are, the current British record ruffe is a 5oz 4 dram specimen landed in 1980 by R J Jenkins from West View Farm in Cumbria, and they are a fish that has become increasingly rarer in recent years.
With this in mind, a recent catch of the species by Lindsay Kingshott really is a special one. Jigging for perch on the Lancaster Canal, the youngster caught a mammoth ruffe, but as is common with anglers who catch the tiny species by accident, he didn't record a weight or length of the fish. It's certainly one of the fattest we have seen in recent years though!
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"I would say it was at least 4oz 8 drams and around 17cm," he told us.
"When I caught it, I was in a perch fishing competition and I thought I had a decent perch at first.
"I lifted it up and my mate and myself went mental at the size of it, but were a bit gutted we didn't have scales."
The reasons for the decline of the ruffe are somewhat unclear, but research has shown this tiny fish has quite a high oxygen demand, leading some scientists to link their reducing numbers to global warming.
One thing is certain, anglers love these increasingly rare fish, but don't forget to bring some miniature scales and a tape measure if you go out targeting them, you might get your name in the record books!
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