11-year-old Callum Pettit was with his father Stuart Pettit on a fishing trip in Reims, France when he reeled in a massive 96-pound, 10-ounce fish that made him the new junior angler world record holder for carp.
Video footage posted to YouTube shows the two getting to the river, setting their lines in the water, and eventually hooking on to the carp and reeling towards them.
As it got close, Stuart used a large net to better wrangle it while Callum continued to reel it in until they got a firm hold on it.
Stuart told Daily Mail UK, “We didn’t have any idea of the size of it until we got it into the net and even then we thought it could have been a 60-pound or 70-pound fish.”
“I couldn’t believe how big it was and my arms were really aching afterwards,” Callum added.
After getting it out of the water and onto the scales, they learned that the fish weighed 96-pounds, 10-ounces, only a few pounds from beating the all-time world record for adult common carp record, which is 101-pounds, 6-ounces.
It took Callum 20 minutes to reel in the carp and the fish was twice the size of his father’s personal best catch, who’s been fishing for over 30 years now.
“It is a once-in-a-lifetime fish and Callum has caught it aged 11. Where does he go from here?” Stuart said. “He would have more of a chance of winning the lottery than catching a bigger carp than that. I don’t think it has really sunk in yet and he hasn’t understood the magnitude of what he has achieved.”