I was in India seeing my Dad and decided to add a trip to Thailand to fish.

I should once fish India for Masheer but I have not done the research and was not inclined to spend big bucks to fish without doing the legwork.

I grabbed a flight to Bangkok for $200 from Bombay/Mumbai and decided to leave a very expensive India for a relatively cheap Thailand.

I am a big fan of Bangkok - I think it one of the best tourist cities. It has everything - good hotels, good food, good night life, good transport, good shopping and good fishing. It has a big international tourist base but is relatively light in Americans - 24 hr flight from the US being the main culprit.

Friends from US/Houston, Monterey Mexico and other places who were in Asia and said they would show up did not. Perfect for me as it gave me more free time to fish.

I had contacted Tap at Bangkok Fish Guide Service via facebook messenger http://www.bkkfishingguide.com/ and found him informed and responsive. I booked a one day fishing trip with him to IT Monster Lake http://www.bkkfishingguide.com/it-lake-monsters. Total cost with everything including tip was around $325.

Tap picked me up at my hotel at 6:00 am and we were off driving 2 hrs to the fishing location.

The fishing lakes in Thailand and stocked lakes. There is little natural fishing outside of snakeheads in the dams. I have no problem fishing a stocked lake - I would not hunt a stocked ranch but for me I like fishing stocked lakes with a ton of fish.

IT monsters lake was developed by a sugar baron and he spent a serious amount of money developing this lake for his personal fishing and then lost interest in fishing. There are 2 lakes - one is a predator lake and another is a catfish/carp lake. I wanted to fish the predator lake mainly for aripama and redtail catfish. The morning fishing was lure fishing and afternoon was bait fishing.






Shade to get out of the sun



I spent the morning casting lures with a few bites. I managed to catch a redtail on a lure and it broke my dry spell on redtails as I did not catch one in the Amazon in December. I like redtails - there are a tough as nails fish and you don't have to worry about reviving them like a pirabia or aripama. Caught an alligator gar but no bites from the aripama.

Redtail on a lure




Alligator Gar



We went to a massive fish market for lunch. This fish market sold all kinds of live fish - you can buy peacock bass, aripama, mekong catfish and it was the size of 5 super walmarts.


Lunch








We bought some walking perch as bait for afternoon and started fishing.

On the light rod Tap put the secret redtail bait - a piece of banana. He dropped it like 9 -10 feet from the deck in 3 feet of water and the redtails started hitting it like crazy. It was fun as I hooked them right at the deck and they would take off stripping line from the reel. After taking 100 plus yards the task would shift to fighting the fish for 15-30 minutes. After the fist redtail I repeated with same bait (occasionally dipped with fanata in Biebs honor) and the same spot. I caught way too many redtails and a big pacau.

Secret Redtail Bait



Biebs





Redtails galore







Pacu




Did not catch a aripama but discovered by new favorite fresh water fish. The Chao Pharya Catfish !!!!!!!!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_pangasius

This is the predatory carnivorous cousin of the mekong catfish.

http://bigfishesoftheworld.blo...hraya-pangasius.html

This fish is also known as the dog eating catfish. This is a apex predator that likes to play with its food.

There are some big ones at IT Monsters. Late in the evening we had a massive bite on a live walking perch - took line out 50-60 meters in the aggressive bite but when we set the hook the bait came back. The chao pharya was just toying and had swum off with the bait and not swallowed the bait.

Now my focus is to go back and catch a Chao Pharya catfish - the aripama has lost all interest.

I would highly recommend Tap and Bangkok Fish Guide and I would recommend going to IT Monsters lake.

Bungsarman and Mekong Catfish Report to Follow.

Mike

Outstanding! You need to change you AR handle to Catfish!

.

Nice Fish congrats.

Nice fish! Thanks for the report. The wife and I have a week of fishing scheduled there for December.

quote:

Originally posted by JTEX:
Outstanding! You need to change you AR handle to Catfish!

.

Jim

Steve Arhenberg is the catfish expert on AR. He has got me hooked on big catfish. We are working on coming up with a big5 of big7 of the catfish world.

Mike

quote:

Originally posted by JA:
Nice fish! Thanks for the report. The wife and I have a week of fishing scheduled there for December.

A week of fishing in Thailand will be a blast.

Contact Tap at Bangkok Fishing Guide for Bangkok stuff. Bungsarman is worth going too.

IT Monster Lake for Chao Phayra

BKK Amazon for Aripama on lures.

The baramunddi lakes.

There is also very good fishing in other resorts - Gillians in Krabi and other spots.

Thailand in truly a great place to visit. If you like Thai food it only gets better outside Bangkok.

My advice is eat at the Malls - the best food in Bangkok is at the malls.

Also very good other asian food other than Thai.

My favorite hotel in Bangkok is Sukothai - Bangkok has great hotels at the $100 a night rate.

Mike

Thanks for the advice!