General

Rigging for cats... by Mick Brown

Until recently, I’ve caught most of my cats on live bait or dead bait. Live baits have been best of all but it can be tedious work though, catching them, keeping them fresh and getting them into place. Then, in the pitch black, after all that trouble to get the bait into a prime position, a ruddy pike or eel comes in and mauls it! Very annoying, especially when you are tired and wanting a relaxing session.

Cat fishing like this can be very frustrating but then a trip to Spain convinced me that livebaits aren’t necessarily the best approach for cats. I discovered, like all those that go there, that Halibut pellets are the catfish bait supreme. In a week’s holiday, I took no less than 21 cats weighing over 100 lbs on the 21 mm Dynamite Halibut pellets and came home fully confident that they would work on my home waters too.

I wasn’t going to ignore boilies either, far too many cats are caught ‘accidentally’ on them for my liking. I had to condition myself from believing that the catfish was a predator and accept that it was just a greedy sod that would eat anything that it took a fancy to. Pellets and boilies are well up on its list!!

Halibuts proved a fantastic choice as I’d expected. Both of my favourite waters responded well to them. The fishing is so much simpler. Just put out a bed of bait with a catty, rigs in position and wait. If you have a false run or feel the need to recast, you can cast quickly back to the same spot by marking the line with magic marker. You can’t do that so easy with a livebait rig, especially at range and from a difficult bank on a windy night.

The only problem is that everything else in the lake loves Halibut pellets too and where there are hordes of small fish, they can whittle 21 mm pellets down in a couple of hours. I don’t find this a problem as I like to recast a bait every few hours anyway if it is not getting attention, especially in the deadly hours just into dark and at dawn. You might be surprised just how often a bait is cast into a snag or an area that won’t produce a run and then a recast produces an instant response. On my last trip, I reeled in a bait that I expected to be taken to see why it hadn’t. I reeled in, from fifty yards range, a fully packed rucksack and my bait had somehow lodged into it! That’s the only time I’ve ever put a slight bend into my favourite Owner hooks (pattern SSW 5111 )but I was pulling with all my might with 50 lb braid and Fox 4.75 lb test curve Pellet Master rods!

To make sure I don’t get bothered so much by nuisance fish, I fish multiple baits most of the time. That’s sound theory up to a point but cats can get wised up like any other fish so I also fish smaller baits on some rods to see which will be taken. It’s not always the bigger bait.

If I am expecting a long wait or I don’t want to keep recasting then I rig with boilies and once again, multiple baits help to minimise nuisance fish. Most of the fishy flavours work and three 20 mm on the rig usually means a cat or nothing. I don’t mind catching carp, tench or bream but not when I’m catting.

The rigging up isn’t rocket science, just one, two or three 21 mm pellets or 20 mm boilies on a hair. You will need a nut drill to drill holes through the pellets before rigging. For some reason they drill better through the side rather than down the length which tends to split them more easily.

I have a few standard hook lengths ready for each of these variations. The hook size is matched to the bait size. One bait, 21 mm pellet or 20 mm boilie, on a size 2/0 with a hair length of one inch. Two baits on a size 4/0 with a two inch hair length and three baits on a 6/0 hook with a three inch hair length. The hook length, which I make approx eighteen inches long, is 45 lb Fox Armadillo and the hair, tied with a knotless knot, is formed as a long loop which keeps it a little stiffer and makes it easier to use the baiting needle. Naturally I have to use a large boilie prop to keep them on. A small length of 2 mm rig tube on the hook shank and over the hair ( 1.5 mm on the 2/0 hook) is used to take up any slack on the hair and position the bait tight to the hook, pretty standard practice. If the hair is a bit too long, I peg the pellet nearest to the hook with a bit of twig to keep the baits tight together and prevent tangling.

I don’t think you can ever overdo trying to attract cats and I also like to add a PVA bag of pellets or boilies to the rig when casting out. The Wide Fox Fade away bags hold either eight 21 mm pellets or a dozen or more 20 mm boilies. Ready for the whiskery vacuum cleaners to come and hoover them up, hopefully with my hook bait!

You can also add further attraction by soaking your baits in flavouring for a while before rigging. I keep telling myself to take some disposable gloves with me as it really makes your hands stink.

I use a simple semi fixed leger rig utilising a Fox Safety Clip with a three ounce leger weight. Over the trace swivel I force on a Fox Sea Knot Buffer Bead but put it on back to front. Putting a small slit in the bead helps it go over the size 5 swivel more easily and lock it in place. As luck has it, the Safety Clip then fits nicely into the hole in the buffer bead, locking it in position but coming apart when necessary.

For bite indication for catfish I have given up trying to hit anything other than a really positive bite. This might be a screaming run or simply the rod tip shaking about and the line tensioning and pulling slowly from the spool. I think that many times, the way I rig up sees the hook pull into the cats jaw and it often shakes the bait about but can’t dislodge it. That’s why I use such big hooks which are razor sharp and I have caught many of my bigger cats by striking at such events.

Finally, I have been using some specially made 30 mm boilies which recently caught me a 53 pounder. To prevent them from masking the hook, I put a 20 mm boilie next to the hook first. I’ve also taken to wrapping my baits with a smelly paste as well, feeling that it will speed up the chances of my bait being found.

Catching catfish isn’t half as difficult as it sounds and it’s one of those incredible experiences that no angler should miss. When you hook up to something that can make you pull back with every ounce of strength in your body for five or ten minutes you will know what I mean. It’s not for the feint hearted! I hope these rigs will get you started but never be afraid to experiment, especially with attractors and flavours in the bait.