Not as strange as it may sound, as Claire had her first experience of Catfishing this week! Here’s how she described the events as they unfolded:-
“As some of you may know I like to blow the ROW trumpet, so when I first visited the Manderson Trust lakes and they mentioned that they had a problem with a rogue catfish eating their stock I naturally thought of Nick who has a lot of experience catching some very large cats from the Ebro.
So this Sunday Nick arrived at the Manderson trust at 12ish and got a wonderful welcome from all the trustees of the charity, he was given a guided tour of the lakes before picking where he’d like to try and catch this rouge fish from.
We arrived at about 1 o’clock and promptly got all the important bits sorted which consisted of sitting down in the sun and eating a full Sunday roast with a bottle of wine. We then got round to setting up all the rods that we would hopefully trap this cat with.
Nick has a lovely pair ……. He also has a couple of nice custom made cat rods from his time in Spain. On one he used a great big smelly pellet around 40mm in size, on the other he started off using half a tin of luncheon meat (apparently this cat loves it, well some one has too). I had one rod capable of handling a big cat so on Nicks advice I put my bait (also a huge pellet) in about 20m further down the lake.
Julz and I also put out three carp rods between us in the hope of catching one of the carp that go to 30lb plus in the lake.
As time past not a lot was happening, no carp bites and not a hint of movement on the cat rods, so I offered Nick the frozen roach we had bought with us and Nick decided to change the luncheon meat for a dead bait. As it got towards time for bed we all decided to take the carp rods out and just leave the cat rods in for a while longer.
As there were no trustees from the charity present we were asked to stop fishing at dark and start again at dawn, we were a bit naughty and fished a bit beyond dark and at about 9ish my cat rod went screaming off then stopped (We had been sitting a little way down the bank) just as I got to it off it ran again, I struck and in the dark after a few minutes fight I could see a cat about 2 – 3ft long, which promptly rolled on the line and unhooked itself just at the bankside. Nicks explanation was that the hook must have been on the cats very hard pad.
All Sunday night we could hear carp jumping and at least once a cats tail slap could be heard it was a very busy lake.
About 5am Nick cast out for the start of 48 hours non stop fishing, within half an hour his dead bait went shooting off across the lake then did nothing at all, after a long wait Nick reeled in hoping that the cat had picked up the bait and the gone to sleep, no such luck there was just a dead roach on the end, a roach where all the scales had been sloughed off by the cats mouth pads.
I had to go to work on Monday and I was sent off with a shopping list of bits Nick needed, including more dead fish some 100lb line and a ballcock float.
I was very disappointed with the Cambridge tackle shop I went into, when I asked for 100lb line their response was “You’ll have to go near the sea for that.” The strongest line they had was about 20lb.
Anyway we sorted out the line problem with Andy from the Manderson trust and I got all the other bits and bobs.
Once I got back to the lakes at the end of the day I was shown pictures of that days excitement, Julz had caught a lovely little carp (breaking her Mandersons duck) and she had a lovely dragon fly decide to perch on her.
I case anyone out there is wondering why we needed a plumbing part I will try to explain. The float was attached to the bottom swivel on Nicks line and also to some lighter line. This meant using a bait boat we could string the float into the perfect position. Also attached to the bottom swivel was a trace of 60lb line (thanks Andy) and at the bottom of that was a large dead bait. All this created a floating bolt rig. Again all the carp rods were removed and just the cat rods remained during the night..
Monday must have been one of the best nights sleep I have had whilst fishing, there were no jumping fish no splashes and not even a single beep from all the bite alarms. The only thing to wake me was Julz getting up to drive to the loo on her electric scooter.
Claire 
Julz 
Camp R.O.W.!!
On the Tuesday morning we decided to try every trick in Nicks ‘little black book of pussy prodling’ so we adjusted rigs moved the positions of baits sometimes only by a few feet and generally tried to make everything as enticing as possible. Still no cats appeared, but on the upside the carp seemed to be feeding a bit better and I broke my Manderson duck with an 8lb 14oz common.
Into the evening and a bit more fettling with baits and positions ready for the night, and the carp were feeding well, with a lovely 10lb scarcely scaled mirror, a 7lb 8oz common and a 7lb 15oz common all being caught during the first part of the night. It was a real shame that was the last of the excitement for Tuesday night.
Strange fact we worked out later was that in the three days we all fished, there were only eight carp caught of which 4 were caught by Julz and me, all on the same bait… …. A new secret recipe that Nick has been testing for Des Taylor of SBS baits, all I can say is it worked amazingly and Des send some my way 
Wednesday morning started off overcast and dull Nick was still hopefull that the cat may be prowling, at about 10am the sun came out in full force so Nick decided enough was enough and he’d get off home an hour or two early. He did however say in his best Austrian accent “I’ll be back”. Ever get the feeling that Nick wants to get his hands on this particular wet pussy? 
It was lovely to spend a few days fishing with Nick I think we both learned a lot even if we didn’t get to see the monster catfish, and we are looking forward to Nicks next visit. Better luck next time. 
