THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

My final day was to a fishery which Eddie normally uses to kick a week long booking off, and to close
with. A lake where back then he was offering a money back guarantee if you didn't catch a fish topping
forty pounds. How many fisheries dare make an offer like that. Bungsamran right in suburbs of Bangkok
city justifiably can.
This is quite a large lake surrounded by open fronted bungalows with fishing platforms looking out on
to the water. Essentially, the fishing is either for mekong catfish or siamese carp, both of which can
easily top one hundred pounds at this particular venue.
The lake record carp if my memory serves me right is something like 264 pounds. On the flip side,
siamese carp are neither numerous nor are they easy to catch, so the majority of people tend to
concentrate on the mekong cats.
There are also some huge arapaima in this lake, which as air breathers, you will see topping here and
there over the course of the day. Not that you are liable to catch them, as both the carp and the cats are
vegetarians, whereas the arapaima are strict carnivores. You can't deliberately fish for them there either.
After some unfortunate historical incidents in which large arapaima died, deliberate fishing for them
was stopped, which is a pity, as some of the specimens that have been left to munch their way through
the many smaller bait fish the lake also contains, are now up in the many hundreds of pounds.
Phill Williams, Giant Featherback Pound for pound, I would rate mekong catfish as the hardest
fighting freshwater fish I have ever come across anywhere.
The nearest comparison I can make is a big powerful tuna. They never give up, have immense reserves
of power, and they stay deep, tearing off line right until the moment they are engulfed by the landing
net.
Worse still, some would run straight at you and swim between the wooden stoops holding up the fishing
platform which meant they were actually behind you. But you couldn't turn to face them because they'd
gone underneath with so many potential snags.
482