I arrived on the lake car park at about 5.30pm and was pleasantly surprised to find just two other anglers present on the lake. I hurriedly made my way to a swim I had never fished before but had seen some ‘fishy’ activity in the previous week. Judging by the volume of water displaced I assumed they were feeding cats and so I decided to target these. As the water is fished mainly by carp anglers the cats would have seen plenty of boilies and with this in mind I decided to fish two rods both with large 18mm boilie hookbaits. I chose a strong smelling fishmeal mix that I was sure would appeal to the resident cats. 
Baits were placed in the near and far margins, the far one with about a dozen freebies catapulted in the swim and the near rod with a pva bag full of chopped boilies and trout pellets. Hooklinks were 35lb Kryston Quicksilver with a size 4 hook. 12lb mainline and a 3oz in-line lead completed the set up.
Just on dusk I had my first take when the bobbin on the far margin rod dropped back abruptly. the resulting strike produced nothing. Over the next few hours this was repeated another two or three times with bites either dropping back or line being taken slowly off the baitrunner. After the fourth missed run I wound both rods in to reassess the situation. I decided that I needed to give more line to a taking fish and also to ensure the whole of the hook was exposed and not masked by the two large boilies.
I changed both rigs to running legers with bobbins repositioned as drop-off indicators and also retied my terminal tackle with 3in hair-rigs. It was now around 1.00am and it would have been much easier just to ‘zip up’ and have a re-think in the morning, but something was moving out there and within half an hour both rigs were repositioned with new confidence.
After just 20 minutes the near margin rod was away and at last a strike met with resistance. The fight was typical of a cat, slow and ponderous but with awesome power. The harder I pulled the harder it pulled back. After a super fight lasting all of 15 minutes I slid the net under my first ever English catfish, so whatever it weighed it was a new personal best.
For the record it weighed 17lb 2oz and after a couple of quick photo’s on the unhooking mat it was safely returned. I don’t know for sure if changing the rigs resulted in me getting a good hookhold but I would guess that this was the case. I looked at my watch as I opened a can of beer to celebrate, it was 1.30am and as I sat on the edge of my bedchair gazing out into the lake suddenly everything seemed okay in the world and I had a grin like a Cheshire Cat!
