catfishing at whiteacres

[Murphyboy69]

Hi all, I'm off down whiteacres for the first week of may and doing my first ever bit of catfishing. Just wondered if there's anyone with some tips or advice with the tackle, rigs and tactics I should use. Line strength for mainline and hooklength advice would be great as I don't really know how heavy gear I should use as I've never felt the power of a catfish. I was thinking 15lb mainline and a 20lb braided hook length???? Any tips or advice on any of the ponds would be much appreciated though as I will be trying visit as many of the ponds as I possibly can.

Thanks and tight lines.

[Portland Pirate]

What size are the cats there?

[Murphyboy69]

Think they reach up into the seventies.

[Portland Pirate]

Then forget mono. Go for 50lb braid with the same size strain hook lengths.

I would use hair rigged halibut and squid cocktails. Big cats like big baits. Get plenty of ground bait around your main bait.

[Murphyboy69]

Cheers fella

[trackman]

How did your fishing go, i was at white acres over easter carp fishing , not a bad week.

[Murphyboy69]

It was ok, but fishing was a bit off due to spawning. Pleasure ponds were fun to fish even though the fishing wasn't to its best but still caught plenty to keep us entertained, we managed to bank every species apart from a tench, typical though as its my favourite fish. Specimen fishing was a different story though. Absoulte shite. Didn't even get a chance to fish pats pool as everyone just seemed to ignore the 48hr rule and stayed on the pegs for a week. And the bailiffs weren't much help either as they didn't seem to care when we told them no one was budging. Ended up doing a 48hr session on nelsons instead, but that was dire. Didn't even have a run. Was quite glad to hear at the end of the week that only 3 fish had come out of pats pool, 2 carp and a baby cat so we didn't miss much by not fishing it. Bolingey was a good day out, not up to the level its said to be but with all the spawning going on, that was no surprise. Few doubles came out there. All in all we he had a great time and even though the fishing wasn't the best we knew that was down to the spawning (and maybe the fact that easter week was before and was told people were chucking bait in like no tomorrow). Going back down in sep for my birthday so hopefully we'll manage to grab a peg on pats pool then. And we've decided that if people aint budging off there pegs and the bailiffs still aint doing anything about it, we'll take matters into our own hands lol. In other words....."Get off the peg, or you and your gear are going in" lol

[trackman]

when i fished there years ago i believe python was the best for good tench, fished close to the island in shallow water.