siamese-carp

April/May 2025 overlap

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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).

Mekong 20kg

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”.

Siamese carp (40kg=88lb)

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”.

100kg (220lb) Mekong

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.

Siamese Carp 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.

October 2024 Part 1 – WOW!

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I am going to start this a bit differently! Gareth, my son in China, had a few days off so what does he do- he books a flight to Thailand for the Wednesday, fishing on Thursday and flight back on Friday!. So he gets there with my grandson Zachary on the Wednesday, spends the night in a hotel in Bangkok, gets a pre-booked taxi to the fishing lake on Thursday (the drive is about 40mins and the drivers waits there for him) and gets to his “peg” – a bungalow/chalet on stilts at the edge of the lake and fishes from the verandah/ staging of the bungalow. All tackle and bait provided as are the services of a guide. The lake in question has a reputation of providing customers with 2-3 fish a day with 10 fish being stated as exceptional. The lake is very deep 40+ feet and the method is like a massive bagging waggler/ pellet waggler with paste.The fish are a mixture of Mekong catfish and Siamese carp. Early on he latches in to a fish and gets it in but the guide has to call for help as it is only the largest fish in the lake -an 80kg (approx 176lb) Mekong catfish, it takes three guides to get the fish out of the water!

Now if this wasn’t enough he goes on to land further Mekongs and Siamese of 20, 30, 30, 25, 40, 30, 13 (carp), 35, 30, 30, 30, 35, 40,40, 35,20,30, 20, 20, 25 (carp) all in KG! 21 fish in total plus he lost a further 15 when they went under the stilts of the chalet! He packed up early with still time left on his ticket as he was shattered! Zachary managed to get a Mekong also with the help of the guide!

Back to our reality! Bowood October 2nd peg 10 started with bait in water at 9:20 until 12:00. Pike rod out and the autumn/winter set up on pole- lighter elastic and 0.12mm to a 0.10mm hooklength and 18 hook! Two balls of groundbait with a few micros and corn plus 6 grains of corn introduced and roach appeared after 10 minutes to be rudely interrupted after a further five with the pike float disappearing! A very feisty fight ensued with a pike of 8-08 giving a very good account of itself given its size!

More roach then the rudd took over interspersed with another pike of 7-06 and a third one of about 5-6lb that threw the hooks!. Ended up with 34 rudd and 6 roach for 5-10 making a total of 21-08.

Friday 4th sees me back at peg 10 fishing 9:30 to 12:00 set up the same as last visit but today was a lot harder. 10 roach 1 skimmer and no rudd! I had two runs on the pike rod, both lost with hook pulls. The first I had on for about 5 minutes- a very big fish that was taking line of the clutch – I am a “back winder” and the clutch only comes in to play under extreme pressure. This fish felt as if it was a twenty and a good twenty at that when it broke surface you could see the thickness of its back and length. The second while smaller was also a double again lost after a shorter fight. I changed the trace after this visit!

Two days later back at Bowood but I was a bit later having to do some errands first and found someone on peg 10, so I slotted in on 8 in order to give the other angler plenty of room. Now peg 8 is a good 18 inches to 2ft shallower than 10 but can throw up surprises! Not today though as no runs on the pike rod and my one bite on the pole produced a massive one ounce roach half way through my 10am to 12pm session! The angler on 10 fared little better with just about 10 small fish.

On to Tuesday 8th back on 10 started at 9:30 and packed up at 11 after 11 roach and 6 rudd as at 10:30 the heavens opened and biblical rain fell so heavy I could not see neither my pole float nor my pike float! I got back to the car just as the rain eased in intensity. Returning home things were just about getting clear, so laid things out to dry in garage and went in to find my wife had to catch a couple of parcels from the postman as he couldn’t get close to the door because of the depth of water that was in the dip in front of the door, indeed he had to throw a stone at the door to get her attention. Fortunately the water had dissipated by the time I returned!

The rest of the week has devoted to drying kit and getting ready for the silvers match I was running at Meadowlands near Coventry. I usually only pay sections in my matches as it encourages everyone to keep going as they know they can still pick up even if the area is poor. In the end 16 fished the match with two no shows, fortunately they had paid the peg fee so my costs were covered. Anyway I ended up with the scales for my section on peg 3.

The picture was taken at the end of the match, the start was marked by a short shower! As you can see the peg was in a wooded section and the tree cover above the peg meant I would need to fish the pole only as a waggler or feeder would be catching the various branches. Calling the all in I started by introducing two balls of groundbait with caster and worm at 11m directly in front of me with a pot of wheat introduced to my right at 2 o’clock also at 11m in the ubiquitous 3 feet of water. I had set up just two rigs, the first with a bulk about 8 inches from the 18 hook with a number11 dropper. The other was set up as a strung out on the drop rig. Both rigs were 0.12mm line to 0.10mm hooklength and 18 hooks, the on the drop float was a homemade chianti style taking 0.5g, the bulk rig was a BGT2 in 0.5g

Starting on double maggot a couple of roach appeared but it was slow so single red maggot produced a faster response include one from a tench of approx 3lb, a few skimmers then appeared and after an hour I had clicked 7lb. I then switched to worm head and began to get skimmers when the inevitable blank spell heralded the arrival of carp!

I then had a frustrating remainder of the match hooking carp (two landed 9lb and 6lb, 2 snapped hooklength and 3 hook pulls) or spooking carp – striking at a “bite” to see bow waves shoot from the swim! I ended up weighing in 9-14 made up of the tench 6 skimmers, 7 roach and 2 perch! The section was close with me being 15 oz from picking up an envelope for 2nd in section! The other irritant was the trees were shedding their leaves (being Autumn and all) so at various points we were being rained on by leaves which made shipping out more awkward as you were constantly trying not to hook a leaf!

Section 1
Peg 3 BGT 9-14
4 Martin Paynter 12-01
6 Deal or no deal 8-12
7 Craig Merritt 10-00
9 Pete Hunt 10-13
10 NOT DRAWN

Now after last months lessons I did go back and reread the post from last years match and did try the close in line to no avail, however Darren who was over the other side on 20 won the section and had best weight on the day (27-12) by coming in to the 2+2 line and finding skimmers when he was being carped out on the long line.

No more matches now until next year, so my focus returns to Bowood!

May 2024 Wanderlust!

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A slow start to the month mainly caused by various health appointments, visits from friends and various jobs I had been putting off! As I write this my new passport has just arrived prompted by the impending election (although my bus pass would do) and Gareth’s short trip from China to Jurassic Fishing Lakes in Thailand.

Gareth and family arrived at the lakes on the Thursday evening, fished all day Friday and half a day Saturday before leaving for China. So they draw for choice of pegs on the day before so there is no mad scramble for the “best” areas and Gareth ended up on peg 14 both days. On the Friday he missed a run second cast and then finally latched into a Siamese carp that went 50lb.

Things went a bit quiet as the day got hotter and it was Wendy, Gareth’s wife, that talked him into buying chicken hearts to try. Chicken hearts delivered a whole kilo of them were deposited into the margin and two put on the hook, ten minutes later and a run produces a 85lb carp, ten minutes after resuming it goes again with another at 95lb and a bit later one of 105lb.

He also had a run on the predator rod that resulted in his mackerel being bitten clean in half. Day 2 sees him back at the same peg which again produced, this time a 95lb carp and a 20lb Chao Praya catfish with seven missed runs, probably off the catfish before they had to leave.

Anyway back to more normal sized fish! With the Monkhall festival approaching I decided to make my way there to finalise arrangements and to have a short session on Owl pool which I had not fished before. I decided to limit myself to testing two areas and baits – paste and expander in the margin and at 8m. Feeding micros the long swim was soon fizzing and the 0.16mm line was teamed with a size 14 hook for both paste and margin. First discovery was that there are too many fish in my swim! I was getting constant nudges/liners and the first 4 fish hooked were foul hooked, second discovery was that the new 2mm elastic I was trying was perfect if the fish were lip hooked but was definitely undergunned if foulhooked .

I persevered and ended up with a clutch of F1s up to 2-12 and a few carp plus 10 tench, but at least now I had an idea of what tackle and bait I needed! The time before the event will be preparing the paperwork and tackle plus slotting in a three day trip to Yorkshire!

Another tail hooked Monkhall carp!