Biggest weatherfish ever found in the Netherlands

This is a weatherfish video from the Netherlands.

Translated from the Dutch RAVON ichthyologists:

Wednesday, September 30th, 2015

How big is a weatherfish? A difficult question because this species is not easily found. Two years ago, a big weather loach of 29.5 centimeters was caught in the Netherlands, until recently the largest recorded specimen. That record has now been surpassed by more than one centimeter ….

On August 27, some waters were inventoried around Tiel during a fish course by RAVON at Waterschap Rivierenland. After the Waal and Linge had been visited 21 species of fish had surfaced. An ambitious challenge yet was the rare and protected weather loach, a species of highly vegetated waters with thick mud bottoms. The last location, a ditch close to Zoelen, offered just such circumstances. Initially there was despair among the students when they saw the completely overgrown ditch where water was barely seen. “Do we have to fish in this muddy ditch?”

Not much later there was suddenly a ‘big’ loach in one of the nets, success! Closer inspection showed the captive female was very large and very heavy. After exact measurement it turned out to be 30.7 centimeter in length. In the international literature, 30 centimeters is reported as the maximum for the weather loach. The only recorded instance that came close to that length was in 2013 at Zevenaar, caught by Arthur de Bruin, a female of 29.5 centimeters. To our knowledge, the individual in Zoelen is now the largest recorded specimen worldwide.