A fisherman has caught what, at first glance, appears to be a giant goldfish in the south of France.

The 30lb (13.6kg) catch looks like a grotesquely over-sized child's pet but the surreal orange fish is in fact a koi carp, thought to be one of the largest ever caught.

It took 30-year-old Raphael Biagini 10 minutes to reel the bright behemoth out of the lake for a hasty photoshoot before returning the creature to the water.

“To begin with, we couldn't tell what was at the end of the line but we knew it was big,” Biagini told the Daily Mail.

“The fish was a good fighter, but not enough to win.”

The Montpellier fisherman said that locals often talked of a legendary “giant goldfish” that they had been trying to capture for years.

Koi are extravagantly coloured variations of common carp, developed in East Asia as domesticated, ornamental pets that were eventually introduced into the wild throughout the world.

Koi will generally grow to an average size of 75cm and weigh around 7 kg.