Fishing Overseas (BangkokThailand)
With a couple days to kill in Bangkok.
Decided to go on one of the charters offered my "Fishing Thailand Charters"
The service was very proffesional and designed for westerners.
The cost for a full day was 260$ AUD this was inclusive of lunch, transfer to and from hotel and a full days fishing which was 8am to 5pm possibly even longer if you can handle it.
The day started with being picked up from hotel and driven to lake approximately 1 hour from bangkok city.
Once at the lake I was met with my guide, very fishing smart, not the most social individual.
There is an option without a guide for reduced cost, strongly recommened guide for the fishing smarts with the amount of structure you have to navigate around to stop these beasts its priceless.
The guide than takes you to a bali style bungalow with fan very nice setup.
The gear is good/adequate shimano baitrunners with 15-20kg custom rods. The rig is unique: a float/berley cage with about a 1 meter leader to a size 2/0 super strong baitholder hook. The berley cage has a ball of pollard the size of 3 fists and the hook has some bug the guide had in his bucket.
The guide will cast and bait up for you if you dont want to but I chose to do this myself.
After about half an hour of fishing I was on! First fish of the day was 20kg mekong catchfish(average size), over the day I proceeded to catch 18 mekong catfish smallest being 7kg and the largest being 35kg it was save to say my arms were stuffed and with no gimble belt my groin was F***ing sore.
I lost around 5-6 through snags and breaks my guide made a call on one of the hook ups i lost being a fish upwards of 60kg,the guide had a unique ability to make a call how big the fish was and where it was hooked real early in the fight.
The guys in the bungalow next to us landed a 70kg!! monster, and what a team effort that was too land, amazing to watch.
Ther was also free jumping carp monsterous 30-40kg didnt get stuck into any as they rare on line (They will be in trouble once Kingfisha can score a trip to thailand!!)
Even though some people carry on its cheating and boring as you can see the fish jumping and splashing as its a stocked impoundment, i thorougly recommend to people keen for a big fishing workout session.
The bender weekend in Thailand was good too :P
Hutch
Posts: 2221
Date Joined: 21/04/13
Nice fish, in some of the
Nice fish, in some of the videos I've seen they sure look like they go hard
Ben Derecki
Posts: 1926
Date Joined: 10/10/07
Cool writeup, hoping to get
Cool writeup, hoping to get over there next year so I'm looking into a few options. Cheers for the post.
Geez they look munted though hey.
Uluabuster
Posts: 722
Date Joined: 12/12/10
Is that Bungsarum ? Went
Is that Bungsarum ? Went there about 10 years ago. After the 10th fish I was stuffed and called it a day at 12 noon! Started at 7am.
The guide I had spoke really good English and recommended a lot of good local stuffs for us. :)
I brought my Smith popping rod with Safari 5000 (original Jap model) with drag locked up to mimic a fight with GT and as a training for the then forth coming GT popping trip.
Needless to say i was pretty stuffed after that. On one ocassion nearly got dragged down the pond when I slipped because of the slime left on the deck by the fish caught previously!
I recalled seeing a Siamese carp of 40kg landed by my neighbour. According to the guide, the fish went harder than the mekong catfish!!
I also went luring to an adjacent pond and landed a patin of 6kg (cousin of mekong cat) by foul hooking.....X rap did the damage then.
Lowza
Posts: 136
Date Joined: 30/10/11
Bungsarum It is
Yes it is , they go so hard its a joke the size and quantity, in the future I would definitly bring me own gear and try some techniques.