Nine-year-old angler from Sussex reels in a ‘monster’ 59-pound catfish

Finnegan Kelly from Uckfield was pictured with the huge fish at Latchetts Lakes on Sunday, November 27.

He dad Justin, 48, who runs How To Basically in Haywards Heath, said the boy was ‘in complete jubilation’ after landing the beast.

“He said his legs felt like jelly and he was smiling from cheek to cheek,” Justin told the Middy. “I’m very proud of him.”

Justin said Finnegan has been fishing since he was three years old when he ‘inadvertently’ caught a goldfish in a garden pond. Since then he has developed a keen interest in all aspects of angling, whether it is coarse fishing in Sussex rivers or sea fishing off the Brighton Marina wall. Justin and Finnegan also went to Canada this summer for salmon fishing on the Campbell River in Vancouver.

Until now Finnegan’s personal best catfish was an 18 pounder, which he caught in September.

But Justin said: “There had been talk of this big beast in Latchetts Lakes and that was what he had been trying to catch recently.”

Finnegan constructed the rig for this feat himself and baited it with a ‘a three-course meal’ of ground pellets, boilie and a worm, said Justin. He also got advice from other anglers.

Justin said: “We didn’t think he was going to catch anything because it’s a very latent year with the big catfish going quiet at this time.”

But he said Finnegan remained hopeful: “He cast it himself and when he saw the line was going tight he grabbed the rod and pulled to secure the hook. It then took about 20 minutes for him to reel in what everybody realised was a whopper.”

The other anglers stopped what they were doing to watch and encourage the lad.

“At one point Finnegan almost fell in and I had to grab him as he was being pulled by this 59.3 pound catfish,” said Justin.

The angers were amazed when Finnegan finally landed the fish, becoming the second person to have caught it at Latchetts Lakes. He was ‘extremely proud’, said Justin, adding that Finnegan carefully put the fish back in the lake after he got his photos.