Angler hooks 89 STONE greenland shark setting new world record for biggest fish caught on a rod

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Catch of the day: Angler Joel Abrahamsson reeled in the huge beast

An angler who built up his strength by reeling in blocks of concrete caught a record-breaking 89-stone shark.

Builder Joel Abrahamsson, 33, caught the 15ft Greenland while fishing off Norway.

The monster catch is a world record for a fish caught on rod and reel from a kayak.

Joel built up his strength for the record attempt by lifting rocks and practiced his technique by lowering 60lbs cement blocks into his local lake and then reeling them in.

To give him the extra power needed to reel in the 1,247lbs shark, he strapped himself into a harness that was attached to his rod, meaning if the shark had overpowered him, he could have been pulled into the freezing waters.

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The Greenland shark weighed as much as an adult male polar bear

He used 8lbs of coalfish as bait which took 25 minutes to lower to depths of 1,600ft off the island of Andorja.

It took him 90 minutes to reel in the shark, which is thought to be 200 years old.

Joel, from Gothenburg, Sweden, smashed the previous unofficial record of a 500lb salmon shark caught off a kayak in 2007 in Alaska.

The record is unofficial because it was not recorded on a certified scale. To weigh a fish on a scale would require killing it but the Greenland shark is a protected species and cannot be commercially fished.

The deadly shark had to be measured - more than 13ft long with a girth of six and a half feet - and its weight calculated using a recognised formula by researchers in a support boat.

Joel said: "I knew there were fish of this size in Norway and that was all I needed to know to become obsessed with hooking one from a kayak.

"They're almost like dinosaurs. We know they exist but very few people get to see them and it's always been a dream of mine to see a living Greenland shark.

"I prefer to go after big fish from a kayak to prove it's possible.

"I've been fishing all my life but there was no adventure in it anymore so I started kayak fishing about five years ago because I wanted to be scared - and I was with this one.

"It was too difficult and too heavy at times and I had to just let go of the rod and hold on to the kayak to stop myself falling out.

"The fighting harness was almost strangling my stomach and I was left bruised from that.

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Hook, line and sinker: Builder Joel caught the shark from a kayak - breaking the world record

"The water was really clear and I could see the shark about 50ft under the kayak and that's when I got really scared.

"I just saw this big shadow under me, flapping with its tail. The feeling I got then was a feeling of both total fear and amazement.

"That was about as heavy a fish as I ever want to fight from my kayak."

The Greenland shark - in Latin - are slow-moving creatures that live in the north Atlantic, around Canada, Greenland and Norway.

Its diet consists of other fish, including smaller sharks and large cod, and has even been known to eat polar bears, horses and reindeer.

They have very little interaction with human because of the live in cold and deep water.

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