Weirdest UK & Irish Fish Caught

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:04]Hello. In today's video, I'm going to be looking at some of the rarest and weirdest fish that have ever been caught in UK waters, both marine and fresh water. The idea is that these are the unicorns of the unicorns. There might only be one or two of these fish in the whole of the UK, or it might be fish that just turn up randomly and then are never seen again. So, this is going to be some really, really strange fish. And if you're a species hunter, I think you'll get a bit of a kick out of it.

[00:00:35]So, I'm starting out with a relatively recent fish, or at least they've been caught recently, and that's called the blue carp. Now, essentially, they look like a giant grass carp, and they're in that same sort of family of East Asian fish, but unlike grass carp, they shouldn't be here in the UK. Legally, a fishery that has a license is allowed to stock grass carp, but blue carp are not part of that. So, how did they get here?

[00:01:04]Now, my best bet is that these blue carp were accidentally put in with the grass carp, cuz there are grass carp in this fishery as well. It's called Hawkhurst Fish Farm, which is on the Kent Sussex border. And I believe there are two of these blue carp in the fishery. One of them came out at 51. So, they're both pretty big fish. They've obviously not bred because there's only the two in there. Whether that's because they're both the same sex or whether that's because they can't breed in that lake, I don't know. I'll be honest with you.

[00:01:32]Blue carp are not a species I know a great deal about. But they are funky looking things. You can kind of see the blue sheen on them. So, as far as I'm aware, these are the only two blue carp in the UK. Would I be tempted to go fish a fishery that only had two of them in?

[00:01:48]Well, maybe. I mean, my parent-in-laws actually don't live that far away from it, so maybe next time I'm down that way, I could go give it a go. But blue carp, that's a new one on me.

[00:01:58]Sticking with the unusual carp theme, Limb Angling Club removed a load of carp a few years ago, and these were big head carp and silver carp. If you've seen the videos of the Mississippi when those fish are jumping out on the boats, this is this species. So you can see the damage they do over there where they breed rapidly. They're big filter feeders. They can have huge impacts on the local environment. So it's not a fish we definitely want to have in the UK. Luckily they're pretty rare. There's only ever been a handful of records.

[00:02:30]These fish were removed by the Environment Agency. Some of them were up to 40. I remember seeing a silver carpet Calverton that was framed in a cabinet.

[00:02:41]So I do wonder if it was one of these fish. But yeah, there have been records of big head carp and silver carp. I'm not sure if they'll take angller's baits because they are filter feeders, but I guess it's not impossible. So, there were a couple of records of those turning up also. So, this is another capture from a carp fishery. Now, to get information for this video, I put my feelers out on social media and I said, "Send me in your weird and wonderful fish." And three separate people sent me this, which is an albino channel catfish. I am fascinated by albino fish.

[00:03:14]If you've got any records of albino fish, do send them in. I've seen albino pike, albino perch, albino bream, anything like that is really weird. It's not necessarily that this fish is albino that's unusual, though. It's that the species is anyway, a channel catfish.

[00:03:29]So, these are not Wells cats fish.

[00:03:30]They're a completely different species.

[00:03:32]These are an American species. Now, it wasn't that long ago that you could legally keep channel catfish in private aquariums. 2014 is when they were banned. Now, these albino fish were caught last year, 2025. So, if I had to guess, given the size of the fish and the timeline, these are probably some of the last fish that were allowed to be in the UK before they were banned. There are two channel catfish in this particular lake. The albino one and a normal colored one. They kind of have like an olivey green color. Because channel catfish were fairly readily available in the aquarium trade. In fact, I used to have an albino channel catfish in my koi pond when I was a lot younger. That means that there's probably a few knocking about. However, I'm fairly certain they're not breeding.

[00:04:20]Otherwise, we would see way more of these fish. So, I think what we've got here is legacy fish. These are the old original fish before they got banned.

[00:04:29]So, I dare say there are more than two channel catfish in the UK, but not many more. They don't seem to breed well over here, and we're just seeing those last fish dying out. I hear the odd record here and there of fish coming out like the Grand Union Canal or the Odd Cart Fishery might have channel cats, but they're pretty thin on the ground. And again, being a non-native predatory species, we wouldn't really want them to get established anyway, but an unusual fish nonetheless.

[00:04:55]Sticking with catfish, I got sent this photo which is of a walking catfish.

[00:05:00]It's an African species that was caught out of the tempames. Now, what's happened here is this is a tropical species. There's no way that this is going to survive a winter in the UK.

[00:05:11]What most likely has happened is this is coming into a fish market because walking catfish are readily eaten uh in in certain communities. And I'm guessing that this one has either accidentally been released into the temps or for whatever reason someone's chucked it in there and the angler who caught this was just there at the right time to get it.

[00:05:30]Some of these species could arguably survive in British rivers in the summer, but our winters get too cold for year round. So, it's an unusual capture and I hear all kinds of stories about people catching tropical fish. In fact, there were stories of power stations and industrial sites back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s that would pump hot water into cooling ponds and directly into rivers.

[00:05:54]And people would put tropical fish into that warm water because it'd be way warmer than the surrounding water. and you'd end up with things like guppies, cichlids, tilapia, loads and loads of strange tropical fish that wouldn't normally be able to live in the UK. Now, as far as I'm aware, I don't think any of those are around anymore, and I've never seen any photos of these tropical fish, but I've heard this story from multiple sources, so I'm sure it is true. Interestingly, on continental Europe, some of the hot springs, these are natural hot springs in Germany, do much the same thing. people have introduced uh tropical species and they can only survive in these hot springs.

[00:06:32]So it is kind of continuing over there though I don't think there are any more tropical fish in the UK like that. Well that's fresh water. Let's have a little look at some of the marine fish. Now it's much easier for unusual fish to turn up in a marine environment because they can get there on their own steam whereas with freshwater fish they need a little bit of a helping hand. So there's all kinds of weird fish that turn up.

[00:06:54]There was a record of a barracuda caught off Cornwall a few years ago and lots of weird Mediterranean species are starting to turn up. One that I saw was a record from Unleash Charters. This is a fishing boat off Penzance and they got a pilot fish. So pilot fish are a little fish that follow around larger fish, typically sharks. They're unusual in the UK because they like it to be fairly warm water. So they will follow some of these blue sharks up from the Gulf Stream. Idea say that they turn up more regularly than you think, but if you're on a charter fishing for poor beagles or for blue sharks, who's going to have light enough line and small enough hooks to catch one of these pilot fish? Well, the guys unleashed it anyway. And they I think they've had one or two. I might be wrong. It might just be the single one of these pilot fish. They're phenomenal looking fish. And I would say if anyone is planning to go out on a shark fishing trip, definitely pack a little light rod and a small hook because you never know, you might see a pilot fish. There's got to only be a handful of anglers who have ever caught one of these things in the UK. And certainly if I ever end up out there, I'll have a go. Unleash just seem to have this knack for catching rare fish. Like they get imperial scoldfish, which is a flatfish. I'm not aware of anyone else in the UK catching them really. And occasionally they get things like Pandora's bream as well. And these seabbream are going to start showing up more in the UK. We've already got black bream, red bream, cooches bream, guilt head bream. And I think species like Pandora are going to be more common. I got an interesting record sent to me from Scotland of all places where a white bream was caught. And similar to with the tropical fish I mentioned earlier, there's a hot water outfall going into the sea in Scotland and that attracts mullet and bass that like warm water, but an angller on the east coast of Scotland caught a white bream. That is a very, very lost fish that they ended up catching there. I've also had records of saddled bream and a few of us turning up in the UK. So I think in the next 10, 15 years, we're going to start seeing a lot more bream species caught off the UK. If we leave the UK for a second and just hop over to Ireland, there is an incredible record of a tarpon being caught of all fish. So when I think of tarpon, I think of the Florida Keys. I think of the Caribbean.

[00:09:11]I think of warm tropical water. So what on earth is a tarpon doing off the coast of Ireland? The two nearest populations are West Africa and the east coast of America. So wherever this tarpon's come from, it's come a bloody long way.

[00:09:27]Originally, I thought this was a hoax, but then I looked into it and you can see this scientific paper on it, and it was in the local newspaper, and it wasn't a small tarpon either. This fish weighed a whopping 71.

[00:09:40]So, it's an absolute beast of a fish, and it just goes to show what can turn up. Absolutely amazing.

[00:09:49]I'm going to finish on a couple of honorable mentions. There's lots of weird fish like largemouth bass and walleye that have been caught in the UK, but as far as I'm aware, they're no longer here. So, they were rare and there's no chance of catching them anymore. But if you look at the British rodcourt record list, there's some really strange fish on there. There's coo salmon uh which was caught off the Channel Islands, I believe, from memory.

[00:10:13]And there's also a fish called an asp.

[00:10:15]Now, ASP are basically like a predatory chub. They're a European species. I have a vivid memory reading an angller's mail a few years ago about a young guy catching an asp in a commercial fishery.

[00:10:28]For the life of me, I cannot find that news article anywhere. And then I found this online which says that a 10 pound ass was caught by Sunny Fowler in December 2014 at Churchgate Fishery near Battlesbridge in Essex. So I didn't imagine that or at least I found some information online. I can't find a picture unfortunately, but a 10 pound asp that's a big fish. Again, a little bit like we mentioned with the blue carp and the grass carp. I suspect that that fishery was stocking eyed and the asp came in with the eyed. So, you never know. You're fishing these places and weird and strange species turn up. I might do another one of these videos if people are interested. So, if you've got an interesting fish record, and I'm talking about a super rare fish, get in touch and I'll make another one of these debriefing it all down. Hope you enjoyed this vid, and I'll see you in the next one. Cheers. Thanks for watching. Hope you enjoyed it. If you enjoyed this vid, why not check out this other video right here. If you can, please subscribe to the channel. Only takes a couple of seconds and it really helps me out. I'll catch you in the next one. Cheers.