Fish rescuers have to net sturgeon from pond after he grew to 5 FOOT

Fish rescuers had to be called in to net a sturgeon after his size ballooned from 6 inches to 5ft over 25 years.

The whopper - called Stanley - was put into an 11ft by 10ft water feature in Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts, by the Parker family when he was just a baby.

But owners Daniel and Jennie Parker and son Tristan were forced to ask specialists to remove him after he grew to a monstrous five feet and eight inches long.

They called in fish expert Steve Aldridge, the owner of Gloucester Koi Rescue, to catch the overgrown Diamond Back Sturgeon from the pond at their home.

Mr Aldridge, 51, said: 'Stanley is the biggest sturgeon I have ever had to rescue.

'The owners were under the impression he was about three to four feet long but he was much bigger than that.

'We didn't have a big enough box to transport him in and I had to hand-build one to store him in for the journey.

'We had to stop four times on the journey to make sure he was okay.'

Stanley has been given a new lease of life since his relocation to a pond at least four times the size of his previous home at a private manor house at Gretton near Winchcombe.

Tristan Parker, 44, said: 'I think mum and I paid half each when we bought Stanley for about £50 25 years ago.

'He was only about six inches long then and we fed him loads and he just kept getting bigger and bigger.

'But now he has moved from a bedsit to a mansion.'

Jennie Parker said: 'We are missing Stanley already. We talk about him all the time.

'When he was smaller he used to eat food from Tristan's hand but he hasn't done that for quite a while.

'It wasn't fair to keep him in our pond as it was too small and we managed to find the Gloucester Koi Rescue.

'They came to take a look at him a couple of weeks ago and said he was too big for them to handle, so they had to go away and build a box big enough to transport him.'

Sturgeons evolved millions of years ago with the dinosaurs but this species is now almost extinct in Britain and critically endangered in Europe.

Earlier this year Dave Howarth was fishing on the River Trent when he hooked a 48lb (21.7kg) fish.

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The 43-year-old, who was targeting large barbel, then faced a half-hour battle to land it in his net - before realising he had bagged a sturgeon.

Dubbed a 'royal fish', sturgeons are protected by the Crown in the same way as swans are.

They were once common in UK rivers, but dirty rivers and other pressures virtually wiped them out.

The last recorded UK sturgeon was found in the River Tywi, in Carmarthenshire, south Wales, in 1993.

They were thought to have died out completely.

The ancient fish have been around since the Cretaceous period when T‑Rex was walking the planet.

With a lifespan of between 60 and 70 years, they can grow to an average size of of about 4ft.

However, the largest recorded sturgeon ever seen was about 19.6ft (6m) in length.

There are strict rules in place if a sturgeon is caught in British waters, and it is an offence to land one of the fish with specific permission from the Marine Management Organisation (MMO).