Cornucopia of Catfish : Lake Casitas: The reservoir is stocked with 3,800 pounds of the bottom-feeders. A boy catches one bare-handed.

Leaning back in a folding chair he had placed at water’s edge, Kurt Griffin smiled broadly, checked his fishing rod, and said he was as close as he could get to heaven.

“How much better can it get?” asked the 43-year-old roofer from Ventura. “A beautiful day, good people and a lake full of fish waiting to be plucked.”

Griffin and about 40 other fishing enthusiasts got a late Christmas gift Wednesday afternoon when park rangers dropped almost two tons of wriggling catfish into the cold waters of Lake Casitas.

“The catfish will be easy catching for a while before they start wandering off,” said Ranger Tim Lawson.

In all, 3,800 pounds of catfish were trucked in from a fish farm in Mexicali via a tractor-trailer rig outfitted with special aqua tanks, said Lawson.

When a Casitas park ranger began popping open the tanks, the one- to four-pound channel catfish flopped unceremoniously into the water, just waiting to be caught, according to the anglers gathered around the lake.

Indeed, the fish were so plentiful that a child pulled one of the newly planted catfish out of the lake with his bare hands.

But most of the anglers were not as lucky right away.

“I haven’t caught anything yet, but it’s just a matter of time,” said Jason Riordan, 23, a UCLA student on winter vacation.

Some anglers deride catfish as “junk fish” and “bottom-feeders” because of the fish’s penchant to eat anything and everything they can fit past their puckered lips. And a few anglers heap the ultimate indignity upon the sour-faced fish: They throw them back.

But the 40 or so fishermen at Lake Casitas on Wednesday couldn’t have been happier with their windfall. Some even suggested that whiskered catfish are, well, somewhat attractive.

“Who says they’re ugly?” asked 27-year-old Michael Noble of Ojai, holding a freshly caught catfish to his face. “I like the way they look. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.”

His friend, Robert Casso, 31, of Meiners Oaks, said the taste of the fish overrode any qualms he had about its appearance. “They might not be as pretty as bass and trout, but you can have all those fancy fish. You can give me catfish any day. This is the best-tasting fish around.”

The Casitas Municipal Water District, which owns the 6,200-acre Lake Casitas Recreation Area, stocks the lake with catfish and trout several times a year, said John Johnson, general manager of the water district.

“We like to stock the lake a few times each year so that we can continue to attract a lot of people up here,” said Johnson, adding that more than 1 million people visited the recreation area during 1992.

“And because there are different kind of fisherman, we like to offer different kinds of fish.” There is a 10-fish-per-day limit at the lake, Johnson said.

Park Ranger Lawson said anglers who want to take advantage of the restocking should show up within three days after the fish are dropped.

Noble agreed. The day the fish are planted “can be good if you are patient. Usually I find the second day is best.”

He said the water district, which supplies 50,000 customers with water in the Ojai Valley and western Ventura County, paid about $30,000 this year to stock the lake.

Ventura taxi driver Nancy Wright, 40, said she tries not to miss the days the lake is restocked.

“These are always big days for me,” said Wright, who had not managed a catch after about 30 minutes of fishing. “I have some secret fishing holes I usually go to, but today, this is the only place to be.”