SLEEPLESS NIGHT

A week ago i blagged a night away from She Who Must Be Obeyed and decided on fishing a local water for catfish again hoping for an encounter with a big pussy. Truck loaded, pedal to the metal and i was there at 6pm ready for my overnighter.

After a quick walk around i opted to fish a swim down from where i was the previous visit. The main reason for this being that there was less weed in front of this swim, i,d got stuck in the weed with the catfish i caught previously, and didn,t want to risk a loss due to this. Three rods set up and cast out, two with a good few handfuls of groundbait containing chopped squid bits in ink, tuna, mussels and halibut pellets, and the third rod just hookbait and a small pva bag.

I had one rod baited with a Pallatrax Catchunx pellet  accompanied by a pva bag of the same broken up and fished over the groundbait. The next rod had a Dynamite Baits Squid and Octopus 30mm pellet, which i had soaking in managing glug, also fished over the groundbait. The third and final rod was baited with good old luncheon meat with a pva bag of chopped up meat samples and cast in the opposite direction to the groundbaited area, just to see if the grounbait was having an effect.



After getting the rods out i settled down and cooked myself a nice rib eye steak for my dinner with thick creamy mushroom sauce as a side, all cooked fresh on the bank. After devouring my meal in record time as it was gorgeous and was starving, i sat with a tea cup in hand watching the water for any fishey signs. Initially there was no real movement but as the sun started to set a few silver fish started to top until suddenly 2 swims down i heard a catfish tail slap its tail on the surface. Without hesitation i grabbed a rod i had already set up to floatfish a big lobworm and shot to were i could still still the ripples fading away. I fished tha area for an hour or so but had no joy so trotted back to my bivvy and slid into the sleeping bag as it was dark by now.

Through out the night i must of had more that 6 full blooded runs on my luncheon rod, but i didn,t manage to land any of them. I connected with 3 of them as i picked the rod up as it hooped over for 10 seconds or so before all went slack as the fish dropped the bait. The other rods didn,t even get a sniff, strange as i would of thought that these would be more enticing to the catfish. At 8am the following morning feeling the worse for wear after getting barely any sleep, i pushed the barrow the long walk back to the truck feeling a little dissapointed with the lost fish. It won,.t stop me from trying again though.

I was fishing a running lead system on the luncheon meat rod so i think that i will try a 12in hooklink set up with a semi fixed drop off lead next time so that hopefully the fish will hook itself straight away rather than waiting for me to strike the take. Maybe this will help, who knows....

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