Before my Thai adventure I had a couple of sessions at Rowde. The first I intended to return to fish the same pound but with a feeder, however there then followed a series of annoying glitches to my plan. Firstly I realised I had let my phone at home and when I walked down a boat was moored up exactly in the peg and there was no room to fish so I ended up on the CRT 2 peg that Gareth and I had fished previously. Fishing about 30m out with a basic non-fishmeal groundbait and double maggot I was soon getting plenty of bites on the Shakespeare bomb rod I was using. Hitting the bites however was another matter and a solitary roach and rudd were returned before I switched to worm, this slowed things down and eventually a slow pull on the tip resulted in a bream of 3-06. A small skimmer followed before the boats started and I packed up having fished 10-11:20.

Not to be put off I returned a week later and managed not only to remember my phone but actually get on the spot I wanted to fish.

Same pic as previously but this time I fished 9:40 – 11:20 using a 5m Chinese whip with double maggot over groundbait and loose fed maggot I had bites immediately ending up with 40 skimmers,25 roach,4 perch 2 roach and 2 gudgeon for approx 6lb plus a bream of 4-02 which the whip handled with ease.

I packed up shortly after a boat with Norwegian tourists passed through.

So the time for the adventure arrives! The journey went like this, Tuesday 29th bus from Calne to Chippenham, coach to Heathrow, evening flight to Bangkok arriving mid afternoon on the Wednesday. The first thing that literally hit me as I stepped off the plane was the wall of heat (approx 36C) but the airport was air conditioned and from touching down to me getting into the shuttle cab for the hotel it was 39 minutes- a highly efficient system. Gareth later informed me that the queues used to be 1.5hrs but a surprise visit by the country’s premier changed that as he was appalled especially as tourism is a major economy in Thailand and heads were knocked together and investment and changes made!

Gareth arrived at the hotel at 2am from Shenzen in China and after a short nap and a walk via an underground air conditioned connecting tunnel to the airport/rail station to get some breakfast we met our taxi driver at the hotel at 7:15am. A short 45minute drive sees us arrive at Bungsamran Fishery where Gareth had arranged a session up to lunch time with a guide. We were in Sala 7 which put us almost at the end of the row of salas coming from the reception area. We were a bit early and walked around the walkway where people were already fishing, several large fish were swirling all over the lake.

We met up with the guide Tom and his son Andy (who spoke English) and made our way to the sala. The lake is 80ft deep and the salas extend out in to the lake on stilts so effectively you are surrounded by water. As we got to our sala I spotted a huge shape in the water alongside the sala – an arapaima of 100lb+! The tackle and set up will need some explaining! Firstly the rods are about 5ft in length, matched with a reel of approx 8000 size loaded with heavy braid to a mono leader (to prevent lifting scales), the end tackle is a large sliding float with a wire emstadt type feeder with a short hook link of perhaps 3-4 inches. Bait- there is none on the hook just a foam line wrapped around the hook to form a small bead to “pop-up” the hook, this is the buried in a large jaffa sized ball of “lum” – a fine rice groundbait The groundbait was mixed in a large shallow metal bowl using a drill as we would in this country, the difference being that instead of a whisk attachment it was a simple “T” . The sala has an overhanging room to provide shade and a fan to keep cool! The walkways had a similar style roof which partly explains the short rods!

Gareth and I were sharing a rod and he insisted I had first fish! The rod is cast by the guide and laid down on the floor with the bail arm open and the line hooked over a bottle. The float bobs about like crazy and goes under but it is only when the bottle topples over that you can strike! Third cast, about 10mins, a bite and a firm strike sees a powerful fish take line off the clutch. I eventually managed to get some level of control and pumped the fish back to be netted – a Mekong catfish of 20kg (44lb).

Gareth then had a Mekong of 50kg (110lb), my next was a baby of 10kg (22lb), Gareth follows up with a Siamese carp of 30kg (66lb), I then get in on the carp action with a Siamese of 40kg (88lb) Gareth then has a real battle with a fish that runs approx 150m to the left and is in danger of cutting on the next sala, fortunately the guide on the next sala was able to hold the line off the sala until the fish was clear, approx 15minutes later a huge Mekong has its head in the net, the guide has to swim to the next sala to get the large floating cradle and eventually the fish is safely “landed”.

A Mekong of 100kg- 220lb. Gareth is wobbly after the fight and has a sit down and drink! So Tom washes himself down and we are back in action. A short while later the bottle topples and I hook a fish that I cannot do anything with and the clutch is screaming, the fish surfaces way down the lake (I used a distance calculator to get an idea of how far as it was possible to identify where it surfaced) – 170m. Now I first began coarse fishing because as a 10year old I won a newspaper competition for fish of the week that gave me a coarse tackle wallet as a prize. The fish involved was a 40lb monkfish caught off the beach at Llangenneth, now this reminded me of the playing tactic of walking back and the going forwards while winding in – mobile pumping rather than static pumping- so that is what I did. About 12 minutes later we had the fish in the net but the cradle was on the sala on the right as they had also had a large fish, but fortunately they swam it back and incredibly another 100kg (220lb) Mekong was “landed”.

You can see we wore butt pads which were essential plus we wore a glove on the rod hand for protection. Gareth had another Mekong of 18kg(39.6lbs) and I missed a bite as our bait ran out virtually at 1pm which is when we had planned to return to the hotel, gather our things, check out and travel to Jurassic via their taxi.

The draw for swims at Jurassic takes place each evening so it is completely random, Gareth drew ball 8 and decided on Swim 4 for the day. We were both sharing the swim and had three 10ft rods so decided on one predator rod down the side and two carp rods. After an hour the carp rod alarm screams off and I hit into a good fish with the 10ft rod. Eventually I manage to get the fish into the cradle- a Siamese carp of 80lb.

All fish at Jurassic never leave the water so you have to go into the water if you want a picture with the fish – waist deep margins are better than potentially 80ft to a non-swimmer like me!

The set-up at Jurassic is very good with very friendly staff and excellent facilities, however we were greeted with the news that it had been fishing very hard with some anglers blanking a couple of days during their stay! That was borne out by that being our only fish of the day apart from a tilapia of about 2lb that Gareth had on the predator rod- I said we would not count that as his “turn”.

Next day there were fewer on the lake and Gareth had drawn ball 2 the night before and agonized whether to go on peg 1 or peg 16, both renowned predator pegs. Peg 16 had fished well the previous day while 1 had struggled. Peg 16 won but at the start of the day at 7am when rods can go in Peg 1 was quickly into fish! We found that we could not leave mackerel or chicken hearts in the water longer than 3-4 minutes or the tilapia would have left you with a bare hook or a head and skeleton!Four hours in and Gareth gets a run on the predator rod, keeping the rod well under the surface due to the floating weeds he manages to land a red tailed catfish of 30lb.

I should have had a fish but the “run” started and stopped, on retrieve I find a small mussel had closed itself over the point of the hook! That was our lot!

Next day it was back to Bangkok and Gareth went home eventually that night after a three hour delay due to thunderstorms in China and I had a day to recuperate before going back the following morning. An experience I am glad to have had.

Coming up Summer League fun at Boddington and the 3-dayer at Monkhall.