Sunday 4 December 2011
jeremy wade, british's sportfisho decided to grapple with 1 of the world's biggest & deadliest freshwater creature he never imagined he would win the battle. the most exhausting & dangerous catch of his career
the 53 years old manged to snare the 20 stones monster short-tailed stringray in argentina after a tiring 4 hour standoff on the river parana near buneous aires. he said " it stuck to the bottom & borrowed itself in the sand & the mud, so it's like lifting a dead weight. after half an hour with on further movement i was convinced it had swam around a tree. so we moved position & i pulled my rod from a different angle
when i locked the reel with my thumb & heaved & i felt a wrench on the line. then it's stalemate again. for the next 2 hours nothing changed then i gave it it another desperate heave & go it moving. it eventually got tired & when it lifted off the bottom we pulled it into shallow water. it was a huge circular shape, humped in the middle & the same colour as the sand
my arms & back were totally shot afterwards, i was so tired because the short-tailed ray- potamotrygon brachyura in latin - is camourflaged to sand unwary people often tread on them in the shallow water. when the stingray is attack it lashes out with its lethal tail which is covered in thorny spines that can rip flesh to the bone
it has 2 barbed 4 inch prongs which can inject a fresh-rotting venom. if you get the barb through an artery or body cavity it can be fatal! it normally attacks feet & ankles from where people tread on them by accident
it can leave nasty wound & take seven years to stop weeping. people in that area of argentina shuffle their feet forward when walking through the surf so that they kick the side of it & not tread on top of it 
jeremy wade does not fish without these..
credits: dailymail.co.uk /various data
