A man "dream came true" after he stopped to look at a picture of his dad, who recently passed away.
Raymond Sweeney, 53, a keen angler from Liverpool, caught a two stone fish on Saturday after he was convinced to leave the house by the memory of his late father. Raymond has been fishing since he was seven, when his dad first took him out to show him the ropes.
Raymond said he was at home after buying new rods torn between relaxing for the night or heading out to the nearby Stanley Park Lake to test them out. He said that his mind was made up when he looked at a picture of his late dad hanging on the wall.
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He told the ECHO: "My dad’s just passed and I was looking at a picture of him. It was as if he was talking to me.
"It was like he was going ‘get off your a*** and go lad, you’re not going to catch anything sitting in the house,’ so I went."
For years now Raymond has been trying to catch a 25-pound fish, with his personal best being 22lb 7oz before that. However, spurred by his dad's memory, he would return home having caught a 30lb 2oz fish - his personal best and one of the largest common carp ever caught from a Liverpool lake, according to his angling friends.
He said: "I was only there half an hour and I’d caught it. I was over the moon.
"That fish has been my target fish for years and years now. I’ve been around the whole country trying to get that big and I end up catching one on my own doorstep. It’s a dream come true.
"I shared it about all the anglers in Liverpool because I know a lot of them and they were all agreeing that it’s the biggest common carp found in a Liverpool park lake."
"My dad got me into fishing. He was a keen angler and my two brothers are too. So it's something I’ve always done, there’s always been lakes on my doorsteps, like Newsham Park and Stanley Park.
"When I got a bit older I started travelling around the country. I’ve always been after a 25 pound common carp. But this is just wow."
Raymond said he's not going to stop there. His next target is a 35lb common carp.
He added: "My next target is a 35-pounder. I’ll probably have to go to France to get something that big. That's what I'm planning."
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