Two patient fishermen were rewarded with a large surprise while ice fishing in Saint-Rose-du-Nord on Thursday afternoon.

Alain Gagnon and Claude Mathieu took 25 minutes to pull out a metre-long cod from one of the 12 fishing holes they had poked through the ice.

"It's almost scary when you get there and the fish's mouth is as big as the 10-inch hole in the ice," said Mathieu.

The large cod, which weighed 25 kilograms, was nicknamed "the fjord's monster." The men said cod this large are rarely seen in this part of the Saguenay River.

Gagnon said he had to use a hook in order to pull the fish out of the ice.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans said catching a giant cod is perfectly legal.

This isn't the first time Gagnon made a surprising catch. Five years ago, he caught a three-metre-long Greenland shark.

The deep water shark, rarely seen in the Saguenay, weighed more than 225 kilograms.

Gagnon and his wife were fishing through a 25 centimetre hole in the ice when they caught it in 2008.