As dusk fell I caught my first decent bait, a 12oz skimmer. This was immediately given a guided tour of the lake attached to the back of the bait boat. Within minutes, the skimmer was tail-walking all over the place. A cat was trying to make a meal of it. The skimmer was having none of it and was too frisky by half for the cat, which soon gave up. Things went quiet and sleep overcame me.

A friend of mine who wanted to catch his first cat joined me on this journey. He was fishing 3 carp rods and had a token cat rod out (Yes we all know what’s coming!). At 1am his cat rod's alarm screams and after a 20-minute tussle he puts a 24lb cat on the bank. He was thrilled. One hour later the same thing happens. This time, a 30 minute tussle and a 45lb cat, he was now thrilled to the power of 10. This fish is about as good as it gets at Etang de Rouge and he’d had a 40 at his first try.

Sunday was quiet all day. The sun beat down relentlessly and I tried to concentrate on catching decent livebaits. Other people had crucians and tench so why was I destined to keep catching 1oz roach? Monday came and one of the deep-water swims was now free, as a French angler had cleared off. I thought I’d give it one more night and if things did not pick up, I was off to the dam wall. Matt could not catch any carp either, but fish were crashing around in the lilies in the shallow reserve end. He wanted to move too.

I had one run Monday night, and had a cat of 26½ lb, this fish managed to cross the line of another angler. We both played it for a bit until he gave up and let me land the fish. Tuesday was move day. Livebaits were now getting bigger and better, as I’d switched to corn from maggots and was now fishing off the dam wall for livebaits. Darkness fell and I was feeling confident. It was a perfect calm night with a sliver of a moon, very dark, very still, and everyone else was fishing for carp. The line started to pour off a reel. One of my newly acquired 12oz skimmers had been taken. During the fight I could tell this was a very big fish, as least as big as a 46lber I had had the year before. Sure enough, it was 47½lb, a very big fish for this lake, and very fat, stuffed with roach. I was stringing up this fish to a tree when my second rod sprung into life. Another really big fish, but I could not get it into the net as it was about 2 feet too long! I waded in and lifted it’s tail into the net with my foot. When I tried to lift the net onto the unhooking mat, this fish was bigger still and was clearly into sack of spuds territory as it bottomed my 50lb scales. I strung the fish up and vowed to borrow some bigger scales in the morning. After a bit of a sleep, at 4am, another run, again another big fish, but this time the scales coped at 37 ½ lbs. This was the best cat night session I had ever had, 3 fish, a 30, 40 and 50lber. In the morning I went and borrowed some 56lb scales, I wound the scales back 2lb for the weigh sling and tried again. The scales went a pound past their 56lb limit and stuck. Clearly this fish weighed 57lb, maybe a bit more and it had been on a stringer all night. I am in no doubt that it would have weighed about 60lb at capture, as they tend to loose a bit of weight over night. But, c’est la vie. This fish had a peculiar whisker, that branched into four, which was particularly unusual. I was also informed that the previous lake record was 56lb, so now this fish was the record holder.

57lbs, a new record.