Hey guys! Myself, fellow Fishwrecked member Ron (daboogyxen) and my other friend Joel are currently on holiday in Bangkok and we heard that there was a local pond which was fairly pricey but worth the money. As a result we organised to head to Bungsamran Fishing Park (near the bangkok city area) on the 2nd and as you can see from the pictures it was well worth the journey!

Once we checked in for a 12hr stint and booked our bungalow we took a look at the lake and the surface was continuously boiling with large mekong catfish and siamese carp - a trend which continued for the entire duration of our trip! It took a while for us to get a hookup but we had a really hardworking guide who would basically do all the hard work for us if required i.e. baiting, casting, retrieving and once the fish got worked up we had regular hits until we checked out. The rigs we used were really simple - big float, berley cage with a fairly small sized Gamakatsu hook attached. The best part was the hook was never baited! Before each cast we would pack the berley cage with something called 'lam' (essentially berley) and made a sphere slightly larger than a tennis ball. Once we basically bombed the ball into the lake it would create a berley cloud which would attract the fish and somehow in all that confusion the hook would end up inside the fishes mouth! Not surprisingly we did have our fair share of foul hooked fish that usually ended up being lost.

In summary we caught about 16 fish in total from about 35-40 hookups with a few of them double hookups. All of our fish were mekong catfish (Ron did lose one very large siamese carp) averaging around 18-22kg although we did land two 'babies' at around 10kg. The largest reported catfish in the lake was around the 100kg mark so you can roughly extrapolate the size! Also in the lake were red tail catfish, one large arapaima (approx 450lbs) and giant freshwater stingray. It did cost a fair bit for a day trip at around 3500baht all up (just over 100 AUD) but I would recommend any Fishwrecked member to check it out if they are ever in bangkok and have a spare 12hrs :)

Cheers

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