Catch report

Matt Rand : Browney's Big Cat

Being a ‘traditional’ type of catfish angler, I always used livebaits as my first line of attack. It’s hard work catching them, keeping them fresh and bait boating them out in the middle of the night. When the big Halibut pellets came onto the scene, it wasn’t long before anglers like me realised that cats just love them and the fishing was made a lot simpler. Just catapult out a big bed of them and wait! My first trip out with the 21 mm Dynamite Halibuts produced four cats to 50 lb 13 oz.

Where there are massive shoals of roach and bream though, the halibuts can get whittled down and you need to check them after a couple of hours if the alarms are bleeping a lot. While mentioning this at the factory the other day, it was suggested that I should change to boilies on waters like this. They will withstand the attentions of small fish and easily last all night. As I’d never used them for cats before, I wasn’t all that confident. Before I went, they rolled me some 30 mm Spicy Chicken ‘specials’ and gave me some Spicy Chicken paste to wrap round the bait to add to its attraction. Nothing to loose and I planned to set one rod up in this way.

Arriving late at the lake after a long day with one of my customers, I just had time to put out a bed of bait before dark; a couple of kilo’s of 21 mm Halibut pellets laced with a couple of handfuls of boilies. Rods out, kettle on and start the night vigil!

It had barely got dark when I was away, on the 30 mm Spicy chicken special! The landing is a long story but I went in to my waist to put the net under a very angry Cat that went 53 lb 8 oz! Confident in boilies? I am now!

Look out soon for a feature on how I rig up Halibut pellets and big boilies for Catfish...