Prebaiting produces shock park lake catfish - Leigh Flood
“I spent a week prebaiting a swim on my local park lake ready for a night session after I’d finished work on the Friday.
“I put a rod out before setting up my bivvy, and cast a bright-yellow pop-up on to a little gravel spot just an underarm flick from the bank. Fifteen minutes later my clutch went into total meltdown – I could even hear it over the bite alarm!
“I was targeting carp, but it became clear that I was playing something in a different league altogether. Whatever I was attached to stripped 50 yards of line within seconds of me setting the hook.
“After half-an-hour of playing it the fish became lodged in a weedbed, but just as my mate arrived I finally started to gain some line.
“This giant ball of weed came slowly towards me and I feared I’d lost the fish, but then we saw this giant black shape behind it. My mate slipped the net under the weed and in among it was this monster catfish. We just looked at each other in disbelief!
“That’s why I love fishing – you never know what you’ll catch next.”
Leigh Flood with his shock 85lb park lake catfish
Enormous pike landed on a tiny trout fly
A TROUT angler experienced the fishing fight of his life last week after a 30lb-plus pike grabbed his tiny size 10 damsel nymph fly.
Gareth Griffith, from Barmouth, was targeting the stocks of brown and rainbow trout at Llyn Cynwch lake in Dolgellau, Wales, when he connected with the immense predator.
“There wasn’t a single moment in the 50-minute fight where my rod wasn’t bent double,” Gareth explained.
“It went on several long runs in that time and I tried to play it carefully so my 8lb line didn’t snap like cotton!
“I only had a small trout net with me, so I had to wedge its head into it and grab the tail with my hand – it was then that I could see my tiny fly was just nicked in the scissors. It was a fight I don’t think I’ll ever forget,” he added.
It’s not the first time this summer that an angler has landed a giant pike on an unconventional approach, as Spencer King (71) proved in June when he landed a 31lb specimen from a West Sussex lake after it snatched his floating bread off the surface!
Not quite the trout Gareth Griffith was expecting!
Monster 100lb-plus catfish strikes whilst packing up
Peter Walker had the session of a lifetime recently when he banked a 130lb-plus brace of fish during a 48-hour session at Oakwood Lakes near Thetford.
Topping Peter’s catch was an enormous 103lb catfish that put him through an intense battle just as he was packing up his kit.
Earlier the same day Peter had caught a PB carp of 32lb, so was already on cloud nine when the beast struck.
He told Angling Times:
“The session got off to a quiet start, but out of nowhere I managed to hook a pb carp of 32lb on the second day.
“I would have left a happy man, but the trip was about to get even better.
“On the first day I had positioned a double piece of mackerel next to a reedbed and just left it.
“While I was packing away something picked up the bait and went screaming across the lake!
“I could tell it would beat my old catfish PB of 68lb and after a gruelling fight I finally landed this beast – all 103lb of it!”
Peter Walker and his giant 103lb catfish