With catfish plants now every week at Santa Ana River Lake, the action on the whiskerfish is picking up by the day, but there is still a pretty fair trout bite on holdover rainbows.

The action was paced by an 18-pound catfish caught by Thai Dao, Los Angeles, fishing the marshmallow-meal worm combo on Saturday. The top trout was a 14 1/2-pound rainbow landed by Rayael Efren Moreno, Anaheim, on a Lip RipperZ Rat doused with garlic Love Sauce in Chris' Pond.

Carl Adamo, San Pedro, had four rainbows to three pounds on Mice Tails with Love Sauce in Chris' Pond, while Anthony Agular, Orange, had two trout to two pounds and two cats to three pounds fishing nightcrawlers with marshmallows. Jason Cruz, Santa Ana, landed four cats on mackerel and Crave Gravy with the best a six-pounder.

The catfish season Grand Opening has been set for Memorial Day weekend and SARL will be heavily planted with blue catfish. "We have a huge surprise for all our fishermen," said Doug Elliott at SARL. "As anglers may know, we own the largest catfish farm in the California, and we have been hoarding and growing the only supply of blue catfish in the state. We now have over 300,000 blues for exclusive stocking of Santa Ana River Lakes and Corona Lake." "Our current stock of these beauties range in size from two pounds to as much as 20 pounds are more, and we are excited about how big these fish might get in our lakes," said Elliott.

Blues are the largest species of catfish in the United States, growing twice as big as channel cats normally planted in local water. The world record sport-caught blue weighed 130 pounds. But there have been fish caught by other means that have been reported to approach 200 pounds.

Blues are the catfish of legend and mystery. Stories of blue catfish eight feet long, and SCUBA divers who say giant blues have grabbed onto arms and flippers trying to drag them off to eat them.

The best news for anglers is that they are fast-growing and they get big and thousands of pounds of these quality catfish will be planted for the big opener Memorial Day weekend, and they will be planted every week of the catfish season this year. They will join the weekly plants of Silver Channel Cats.