“I spent an hour and a half before I caught it. One of the lads shouted, ‘it’s a monster’ when they saw it.”

The 51-year-old, who is 5ft 9ins tall, posed next to his catch to show just how big it was.

He said: “The fish was longer than I was and when we weighed it our scales would only go up to 200lbs so we know it was even heavier that.”

Wayne, who travels all over Europe to fish, returned the catfish to the river Ebro.

ECHO angling expert Dave Houghton said today: “You have to be quite fit and know what you are doing to catch a fish like that.”

ECHO essentials

THE biggest catfish caught was a 646lbs Mekong giant catfish, landed in Thailand in 2005.