A FATHER and daughter fishing team found more than they expected then they took a trip to Weymouth Bay.

Liberty Aplin, aged nine, her father John and mother Andrea, live in Fordington, Dorchester, with several guinea pigs, fish and a cat called Dudley.

Liberty and her family spend a lot of time on the water in their boat and often go fishing.

One Friday evening, Liberty and her father took the boat out into Weymouth Bay and set their fishing lines.

Liberty said: “We were out in quite deep water and were trailing two fishing rods behind us.

“Dad saw the line wiggle and I grabbed it and started to wind it in and I caught my first bass.

“In the end I caught three bass and two pollock and after that we turned the boat round to go back to Ringstead Bay to check our lobster pots when I saw something.

“It had vanished by the time we got there but I think I saw something take a breath.”

The pair kept sailing round and saw a fin come out of the water. For a while they could not work out if they had seen a huge dolphin or a small whale because the distance between the nose and fin seemed so big.

The dolphin and the boat followed one another for a long time, until it became dark. A couple of times the dolphin swam under the boat and pushed against it, lifting it a little way out of the water.

Liberty said: “It made a dent in our boat because it kept hitting it.

“I thought it would eat us. It lifted the boat up when it was next to us.”

She added: “At first I didn’t think it was a dolphin. I heard that people had seen them in Weymouth. It was just really amazing to see it.”

Liberty said that when she is older she would like to have her own boat and go exploring and make her own TV programme about her adventures.

She said: “I want to tell people about the dolphin I saw to encourage people to swim more and go out on boats and not be so afraid because people can see wonderful things out there.”