Thanks to heavy plants of blue and Silver King channel catfish, the bite at Santa Ana River Lakes just keeps getting better and better. Many anglers are getting full stringers of fish with a lot of cats running from four to 10 pounds.

Kadin, Natalle, Darrel, and Bo Siphengphone, all La Habra, landed eight catfish for a 27 1/2-pound total weight. The big fish was a 9  ?-pounder. The four were fishing just off the Bubble Hole in a pontoon boat with shrimp with anchovy-flavored scent. An 8  ?-pound cat topped off an eight-fish, 30-pound stringer posted by Santiago Palacios, West Covina, fishing shrimp and mackerel in the Bubble Hole.

Pedro Villa, Anaheim, had five cats for 23 pounds fishing the marshmallow-meal worm combo in the big lake at the road, while Frank Morre and Chris Reinberger, both Orange, had 15 catfish for 37 pounds total fishing mackerel. Jose dela Torre, Norco, had 10 cats for 24 pounds.

SARL and its sister water Corona Lake are the only waters in Southern California being planted with blue cats this season, and fish to 20 pounds will be stocked. Anglers can expect to see blue catfish to 40 pounds or more as these fish age -- both in SARL and at the hatchery. SARL has exclusive rights to over 300,000 of these blues and that number will just increase in the next few years. Tilapia are also being planted each week.