A £1,000 reward has been offered to help catch the perpetrators who released £5,000 worth of trout into the River Avon.

Hampshire police were called after bosses at Rockbourne Trout Fishery, based in Fordingbridge, reported that some 7-800 fish had been deliberately released from their stock ponds.

The incident, which occurred some time overnight on Wednesday (JUL 27), is being treated as a theft by officers.

Simeon Osborn, fishery manager, said: "We reported it to the police because it was obviously a deliberate release.

"We came in the morning and the grills had been taken out and dumped into the pond.

"We have quite a few in stock ponds. This is quite a big impact, financially.

"We had a post on Facebook because we have got tiger trout and they are quite rare."

Mr Osborn said the released fish including the tiger trout - an intergeneric hybrid of the brown trout commonly stocked for sport fishing - were worth roughly £5,000.

Rockbourne has issued a £1,000 reward to anyone with information that leads to a conviction of the culprit or any accessories to the crime.

A spokesperson for Hampshire police said: "The theft happened between 8pm on Wednesday, July 27, and 7.30am on Thursday, July 28. We are investigating it as a theft at present."

It is the second trout-related incident to have happened in as many weeks after it was reported that an estimated 60,000 rainbow trout escaped from a fish farm to the River Avon.

The Environment Agency are investigating the cause of their escape and have not ruled out the possibility of prosecution.

A spokesman said that anglers who fish at the River Avon are to report their captures of rainbow trout with the details of the number caught, date, location, size of fish, pictures if they are taken and the amount of hours fished. This information should then be emailed to SW_SWESSEXFRB@environment-agency.gov.uk.

Due to the spotty trout being a non-native species, anyone who unintentionally catches one is not allowed to return it to the water and instead is asked to take it home for them to eat.