Frankenfish Oddity

Whilst most hobby fishermen and anglers olve to boast about imaginary sizes of their catches – Mark Sawyer, 53, caught a real Frankenstein of a specimen, hooking the bizarre  mixture of fish species while lakeside fishing for carp.

Initially believing it to be a common brown goldfish, closer inspection revealed that in fact it was something that might have escaped from some secret laboratory, with what looked like the head of a roach, the rear fin of a bream and amazingly enough the body and tail of a brown goldfish.

Hardly a hoax, as the redoubtable Mr Sawyer, as tackle editor of the Angling Times, has a  reputation of which he is proud and very keen to protect. Fish experts, on viewing the photographs of this mixed-up specimen agree it has to be the progeny of several species, weighing in at just less than 2lb when caught in Cambridge.

Mr Sawyer, returned the fish to the lake after taking his snaps, commenting that in his view, the bizarre beast had a head resembling that of a roach, the lips wrong somehow, the body of an ordinary goldfish, an anal fin like that of a bream and a fan-tailed goldfish tail fin.

He threw it back into Magpie Lake in Cambridge, stunned, having caught thousands of fish previously without ever seeing the like of his peculiar catch, which fish expert Dr Paul Garner believes the odd specimen to be the result of a mating between a fan-tailed goldfish and a normal goldfish, probably released into the lake from the private aquarium of a disappointed breeder.