An angler has broken the ultimate fishing record by becoming the first person in the world to catch 1,000 different species of fish.
Californian Steve Wozniak, 47, has spent 10 years pursuing the astonishing quest that has seen him fish in 63 different countries.
He has spent 20,000 hours on riverbanks, piers, beaches and boats waiting for a nibble from fish ranging from a tiny minnow to a 900lb shark.
Steve has forked out more than £50,000 and racked up over one million air miles criss-crossing the globe with his rod and tackle over the last decade.
The record rodman has fished on every continent bar Antarctica, including places as far flung as Cambodia and the exotic Isle of Wight.
He has snared virtually every freshwater fish native to Britain and spent two years and 4,000 pounds alone trying to capture an Atlantic salmon in Scotland.
Steve has also broken 12 International Game Fishing Association records along the way and has another five pending.
His mammoth efforts finally paid off when he snared a 2lb coalfish in a Norwegian fjord to net the record,that is being dubbed the Cast of a Thousand.
Steve now intends to temporarily hang up his rod to write a book about his angling adventures.
He said: 'It is very humbling to be the only person in the world to catch 1,000 different species of fish.'
'It has been an almighty challenge and one where there have been many highs and many lows, like trying to catch a tench fish which seemed to elude me for seven years.'
'When I caught the coalfish I think I expected it to be this big fanfare event but I was sat in a boat in a peaceful fjord an hour below the Arctic circle.'
'I just sort of sat there with a glow of accomplishment.'
Steve caught his first fish at the age of five and by the time he was in his mid-30s he reckoned he had netted nearly 150 different species.'
He said: 'The 1,000 record started as a testosterone-driven competition between myself and a friend over who had caught the most fish species.
'That started me thinking of the idea that getting 1,000 would be a fantastic and worthy goal to achieve.'
Steve, a manager at a software company but not to be confused with the Apple co-founder, frequently travels around the world for his job and broke off from business to go both sea and coarse angling whenever he could.
In 2006 he took a year off work to concentrate on fishing and netted 180 species in that year alone, taking his total up to 676.
Over the last three years the numbers gradually increased by an average of over 100 a year, culminating in the momentous coalfish catch.
Steve said that his deadliest catches using that trusty rod and line were the 10ft mako shark - which have been known to kill humans - and a stonefish, the most venomous fish in the world, which he caught off Cairns, Australia.
He has also reeled in 33 different shark species, four different species of piranha, a deadly lionfish and 14 varieties of puffer fish - the second-most poisonous vertebrate in the world after the poison dart frog.
He has been badly injured four times in his mission; once when he trod on the barbed spine of a turkey fish in Hawaii and then when his left thumb was gnawed to the bone by a spiny dogfish.
His hands ended up bleeding profusely after he spent five hours reeling in a giant 200lbs tuna fish off Mexico and on another occasion a hook ripped into his middle finger during a tussle with a harmless trout in Germany.
He has caught many fish native to British waterways including pike, perch, chub, barbel, grayling, trout, salmon, bream, gudgeon, dace, bleak, carp, tench, roach and rudd.
Steve, who has thrown 90 per cent of his catch back into the water alive, has also caught a pollock and a wrasse in the sea off the Isle of Wight.
His smallest catch was a tiny minnow measuring a little over an inch which he plucked out of the River Thames at Marlow, Bucks.
Steve, whose partner Marta often goes fishing with him, said: 'I have been very fortunate that my work has allowed me to travel all over the world so I have been able to go fishing on days or weekends off.'
'But I have spent an awful lot of my own time and money personally chasing this goal.'
'Some of the big game fish have been really great and exciting, like blue marlin in Hawaii, black marlin in Australia and swordfish in Florida.'
'Then there have been a couple of fish that have been really tough to catch'.
'I spent a good two years and a few thousand pounds chasing after an Atlantic salmon which I eventually caught in Northern Ireland.'
Steve, from San Ramon, California, said he hopes to one day reach 2,000 different species of fish and will travel to new countries to achieve the goal.
He said: 'There are just so many wild and crazy different things out there.'
'I may have caught more species than anybody else but look how many that I haven't caught; there are more than 31,400 species out there.'
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