A Caister man was surprised when he found a rather large member of the shark family on the end of his line.

Paul Read, 32, was seafishing four miles off the Great Yarmouth coast with his brother Lenny on Sunday (May 19) when he landed a 23.5lb spurdog.

He believes the record for the heaviest spurdog - a member of the shark family - caught is 22lb and the average caught off the UK is 5 to 10lb but as he can not prove the weight of fish he threw back, he can not claim a new record.

“I was using a size 1.0 hook and a 30lb line,” said Paul, who has been fishing since he was six years old.

“It was very lucky to have even landed the fish as when they are usually caught it’s on a wire trace with a size 8.0 hook.”

The slender spurdog, sometimes referred to as the common spiny dogfish, lives in shoals around the coastlines of Britain and Ireland.

They can grow up to one metre long and can be identified by their two dorsal fins which have sharp spines along one edge. Spurdog numbers dropped in the 1970s and are now classed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.