RICHARD Jones was out fishing for mackerel off West Bexington when he spotted something a little strange in the water. 

 “Jean my wife asked if what she saw in the water was a bird of some kind and I looked and agreed with her, but then I looked again and saw a fin flapping in the water and realised that it was a sunfish," he said.

"I continued to fish and hooked it.”

Sunfish have been spotted previously, but it is unknown if one has ever been caught at West Bexington before.

Sean Mcseveny wrote on the website Fishing Tails in 2013: “I was running a River Cottage Shoreline course at West Bexington. As a shoal of mackerel we spotted moved down the beach a couple of the participants asked me what fin was that they could see.

"After a minute or so I could make out a fin that was flapping in the air and kept disappearing about every 20 seconds for a few minutes.

"It was slowly moving down tide about 150m out, and I recognised it as a Sunfish.

"Although I had never seen one from the shore before, I had seen plenty on my travels from a ship, when I was in the Royal Navy.”