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Phil Spinks and the Giant Catfish
When Angling Direct tasked me with filming a video promoting the Shimano ST RB Baitrunner reels, I grabbed the 10-foot 3lb test curve Advanta carp rods and headed for the bank with videographer, Chris Ansell.
I was confident I would catch a few medium-sized carp for the camera, I have used this setup a lot over the years and it always seems to get the job done.
What I did eventually land came as a complete surprise, I was not expecting to be gate-crashed by such a monster.
By mid-morning myself and Chris Ansell where progressing well with the video, despite the awful wet and windy weather, I had caught 3 carp to mid-doubles fishing a 14mm Sticky Baits signature squid pop up over a bed of pellets, corn and chopped krill boilies.
The carp fishing went unusually quite around lunch time, usually a busy period on this particular venue, I thought about reeling in and re-rigging, or re-baiting, but stuck with it for a while longer whilst we captured some B-roll for the video.
Then, out of nowhere I received a twitchy take, at first I thought I’d hooked a large, cumbersome carp, but it would soon be apparent that it was not a carp, not even close.
Unbelievably, the fight lasted roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes! The power was unbelievable. Chris and I had no choice but to take turns playing the fish, around 20 minutes at a time. If I had played the fish on my own throughout, it would of been all too easy to loose concentration or patience and pull too hard and break the line.
After a very nerve racking fight the giant catfish was safely netted. Due to a junior match taking place on the opposite side of the lake we had several comity members of the Diss angling club on hand to help. One of which lived 5 minutes from the lake and offered to go grab his suitable catfish pro mat, weigh sling and scales to allow us to deal with the catfish safely on the bank. I believe a team effort inevitably helped us land the fish.
I’ve landed big catfish before, but this one was slightly different – it was illegal! The catfish was illegally stocked into the lake several years ago and the club have no licence for catfish. They have been instructed by the Environment Agency that the catfish must not be returned if caught. The decision was not mine to make. And I was fully aware of the trouble I could face by returning it especially with most of the comity present.
The catfish was retained safely in a huge catfish pro floatation sling in the lake until collected by the EA. The catfish was transported to a nearby water that was licenced to hold catfish.
People who are fortunate enough to catch the giant catfish from its new home in the future will be competent catfish anglers with the correct equipment to deal with the fish safely.
All in all, an amazing experience, you forget just how strong specimen catfish are. The comity members being there, the light tackle I had chosen for carp, Chris being there to help, the fact the catfish needed extracting from the lake, the planets aligned and I wont be forgetting that days filming for a while.