THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

subsequent angling visit to Graeme
Pullen's place just a few miles down
the road from Fleet, I paid Simon a call
to record a pre-planned audio
interview on all things wels catfish,
and in particular tackle and tactics for
the home waters scene.
What surprisingly stuck in my mind
from that conversation was his top bait
recommendation, which was
lobworms. Something I will most
definitely be trying when next I visit a
UK catfish water, a couple of which
I've recently discovered are not too far
away from me up here in Lancashire.
Graeme Pullen, 122 pounder River Ebro
Associated audio interview numbers:
75.
BULLHEAD CATFISH Ameiurus melas
Bucket List status – result outside of home waters
I can't understand why anyone would want to go to the expense and effort of introducing this particular
fish to the British Isles, when there are so many other more favourable, bigger growing, and harder
fighting species to choose from.
The Environment Agency has been working hard to develop strategies and implement actions to
eradicate unwelcome finned visitors to England and Wales which they see as being of high risk, and
the American bullhead catfish is most definitely on that list.
So much so that EA fishery staff undertook a rapid response eradication operation at the only fishery in
the country known to have the species, that being Lake Meadows Fishery at Billericay in Essex.
At the time of writing, the record is still shown as open for further claims, though that should change,
which is academic anyway if the only
known population in the country is no
more. For that very reason therefore,
identification information is irrelevant.
The only other comment to add is a brief
account of my own personal experience
of the species. A small, slimy, greedy
little fish with a particularly sharp nasty
spine at the start of each pectoral fin and
the first dorsal fin, all of which combine
to make handling something of a
problem as I very quickly discovered.
I was fishing a small surface water
collection pond at the rear of a Florida
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