90lb wels catfish for Phil Stockwell of CW Baits and carpfishingpellets

A day to remember...

My second visit to witch lake could not come round quick enough and as time has a habit of flying by the day soon arrived.
On arrival we found the lake was undergoing some bankside work and our planned swim was closed so had to decide on a different swim. A quick look round for signs of fish movement and we decided on a new swim.
I baited one rod with a chunk of fish and added a pva bag of the new catcatcher extract paste. This was cast around 40m to a deeper section of the lake. The second rod was baited with a catcatcher meat wrapped in paste, this was cast towards the small island.
The first run of the day came after a very short period of time, around 10mins which, was seems to be typical for witch as the sturgeon have a morning feed. After a hard battle with some powerfull runs the fish was in the net, a big sturgeon. The fish pulled the scales round to 61lb, not bad and within half an hour of putting the rods out. The sturgeon do go off the feed very quick once the sun really gets up in the sky so the one fish was it and all went quiet.
The main part of the day from 10am until 3pm was spent catching carp until we ran out of carp pellets!

The fishing was not going to be easy (apart from the carp!) due to the hot sunny weather and I really had to work hard to get the big fish interested in the heat of the sun but after feeding my swim little and often with oily halibuts and catcatcher baits soaked in meaty oily dip and liquid liver extract the water eventually started to colour up and the sturgeon could be seen rolling over the bait. I had a few dropped runs on worms and Leeches fished just below the surface but for some reason I could not connect with them.
Around 4pm I had a powerfull take on the catcatcher which turned out to be another sturgeon which put up a really hard fight as you can imagine and took around 10-15mins to land. After taking the pics and safely returning the 74lb fish to its watery home I re-baited with a new bigger version of the catcatcher meat bait and attached a large pva bag filled with our new thick oily extract liquid. Ten minutes later the delkim screamed and I was in again and it was not a sturgeon for sure. After 20mins of hard work I managed to get the fish over to my side of the lake! This was the first time I saw it break the surface, what a sight! After another ten mins she was in the margin just swimming up and down and finally I managed to pull the cat to the surface where the 72" net was waiting. Exhausted we managed to lift the fish from the water an lay her on the mat. We both stood there amazed at the size of this catfish, wow! The fish pulled the scales round to 90lb, a new PB.
A magnificent 90lb catfish, a new PB and two massive sturgeon, amazing. We lost count of the amount of carp we landed and it was great sport in the heat of the day. What a place ;)

90lb wels catfish

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