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
SHOCK 100lb-plus catfish banked from park lake
PARK lakes can often hold many surprises, but none can be bigger than this giant 122lb catfish landed by Phil Spinks from Diss Mere in Norfolk.
The huge catfish was caught whilst testing carp tackle for a product video
The monster fish, one of the biggest ever catfish landed in the UK, was caught during an Angling Direct product shoot by Phil and cameraman Chris Ansell. Taking well over an hour to tame on the carp tackle it was hooked on.
Originally setting out to catch the venue’s carp, Phil tackled up with 10ft 3lb test curve rods and Shimano entry level bait-runners loaded with 12lb line, which was tested to the max when around midday the enormous fish struck…
“The fight was incredible. Every time we brought it closer, it would shoot back out across the lake,” Phil tells us.
“We had to keep swapping the rod between us to keep our breath, the whole time with a large audience gathering to see just what we had hooked.”
Fortunately, realising what Phil was attached to, the owner of Diss Angling Centre was soon on hand to provide the correct equipment to deal with such a large creature.
“If we hadn’t had the catfish unhooking kit brought down, we would have just had to unhook the fish in the net. We had nothing to deal with something of this size,” Phil said.
The giant fish was stocked into the lake illegally
Stocked illegally, the impressive fish was not returned to the lake but rehomed at a specialist catfish fishery by the Environment Agency.
A representative from Diss and District Angling Club told us:
“The fish was introduced to the lake without the club’s knowledge a few years back. Once we became aware it was in there, we were under strict instructions from the EA that should it be caught they must be contacted, as we have no licence for the species.”