| When Gary ‘Barney’ Knowles phoned me to tell me about his great catch of cats last week the conversation went something like: Barney: “32 lb-plus mate.” You get the gist I’m sure.
My approach is basically an upgraded version of the John Sidley eel rig, but with a quicksilver hooklink, knotless knotted to a size one ESP Raptor. To the hair I tied a 10 inch length of bait floss and attached two polyballs to this. Three large lobworms were hooked once directly through the saddle and were then injected with air. I cast out to an area that had silver fish topping, hoping that this would be an area that the cats would patrol. This part is about 16ft deep and I fished the worms about 4ft under the surface. At about 10pm, just on dusk, the quiet serenity of the Heathrow flight path was shattered by the incessant wailing of my Micron. The line had pulled out of the drop-back indicator and was steadily peeling from the open spool. Over with the bail arm and a hearty thump over the right shoulder was met with a searing 40yd opening run that left me just a little bit exhilarated. Another five runs of between 20 and 40 yards over the next 10 minutes had me just a little excited too, if not a bit tired. The cat went into my 52″ net first time, of which I was very glad. I wet the sling and zeroed the scales and up she goes with the needle just hovering over the 31lb mark. 31 would do, and I’m well chuffed. Not an easy, uneducated, unfished for, gullible cat, from an underfished northern stock pond, but a hard won prize fish from a pressured southern syndicate. The text messages started to fly then and the conversation the following morning went something like….. Rik: “31 lb mate.” You get the gist I’m sure. Footnote from Graham |
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