During the Corona pandemic we also had to take a break with our planned catfish weeks in spring and fell into a kind of "Sleeping Beauty sleep". Making plans was quite pointless. But in the current situation, we too are looking confidently into the second half of the year again and have started our plans for the autumn adventure weeks 2020 in Spain. Since there was also an urgent need to talk about our Wild Cat'z product innovations for 2021, we organized a private "Wild Cat'z Team Meeting" on the Rhine at short notice.
The love for catfish fishing has helped us in this difficult time. To finally stand on the riverbank again to outwit these incredible God-creatures ... - what a joy! And lately we had taken a close look at the behaviour of the catfish on the Rhine. This year, after a long time, we could actually fish the biggest river in Germany at prime time. The often best time of the year, spring and late autumn, we usually spent on foreign waters. Now we focused on the Rhine, or rather we had to, due to the current circumstances.
"In a very short fishing time we had landed two Rhine giants of 2.38 and 2.33 meters long."
Your Patrick Haas and Peter Merkel
Where we would find the Rhine giants in the river was clear to us from the outset due to the experiences we had made, so we could approach everything totally relaxed. In spring, just around the spawning time, you have to fish in shallow water at weed fields or other areas with obstacles. We met in a restaurant in the afternoon and after weeks we were looking forward to a delicious meal and chilled drinks. Our conversation would have lasted for days and we really got going. Afterwards, however, quite routinely, from the always same course of the Rhine fishing, we visited the spot we had in mind and made four Wild Cat'z Beast rods ready to start with robust mounting components from the Black Cat Range.
We fished all rods with fixed booms without predetermined breaking point. The sense is to land the catfish before it realizes that it is hanging on the hook and starts to fight hard and thus might get into an obstacle. Of course this only works for a short fishing distance. As we had sighted the catfish again with the polar goggles before the assembly was put out, we were able to present the bait, so to speak, directly in front of the mouths and had a maximum distance of 25 meters. Ideal! After the bite we had to keep the line tension up and very fast with the dinghy over the catfish to pull it with a determined waller grip into the boat.
This may all sound very special, but it is actually one of the oldest practices in sport fishing. Stalking and fishing on sight is extremely exciting and at certain times of the year simply uniquely effective. In a very short fishing time we had landed two Rhine giants of 2.38 and 2.33 metres in length. With that the spring season on the beautiful German Rhine was over for us.
Savage greetings,
Your Patrick Haas and Peter Merkel, Team Wild Cat'z / Black Cat