IMAGINE reeling in this huge catfish on your first-ever fishing trip.

That’s what happened to council worker Carla Filby when she and partner Tom went to Spain recently.

Miss Filby, 29, from Needham Market, said she had never been interested in fishing before but after seeing the specially-designed river resort in Mequinenza on television, agreed to go with the aim of soaking up the sun.

And after catching an 88lb catfish on her first day, she quickly caught the bug and instead of sun worshipping, she was out until midnight every day, finally netting the monster 116lb specimen on the last morning.

She said: “I had never, ever held a rod before. It was quite scary, especially when the alarm went off. It was caught on the last morning we were there.

“It did fight a lot and it was a case of ‘hold on and go with it’. Hopefully we can go again, maybe next year.

“Next time, though, I’ll pack a few more old clothes because I’ve never seen that much slime before in my life – it was disgusting.

“I would recommend catfishing to anyone, although I don’t know if I could be happy with catching anything under 25lbs now the standard has been set, so sitting on a muddy bank in the rain in England doesn’t seem very appealing.”