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Thailand 2013


cobleyn

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Credit where credit is due- the tackle out there needs to be on a different level and without wanting to spoil the rest of the weeks fishing (before I've written it up)- I'm really impressed that not one of your hooks failed.

 

If you want some of the photo's just PM your E-mail address and I can mail them to you.

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Now to be fair, the guys in the pegs across from me where new on the lake and it was quite busy – so its not like there was much option....and truth be known the feature I was fishing to was over halfway across. So technically I was fishing their water. As an angler, you know when you’re poaching and it was time for a re-think. Clearly I couldn’t be chucking across the pond to the front side of the plateau and claiming to be ‘in my water’. Even if I was so brass necked as to do it- would I really want to be spodding for 2 hours a day just to share a swim with loads of other rods.

A brief chat with the guides suggested that quite a bit had changed since my last visit. The mekongs had started to push the carp around consequently there were new feeding grounds to try. A little time with the marker rod gave me some new areas to explore and I decided that two particular areas could be worth concentrating on. Both were almost identical and felt very smooth and sandy until they hit a gravelly lip. My plan was to get some bait down and vary my casts both onto the back of the lip and in the sand and over the front side of the lip in the rocky/ gravelly side.

Both new areas were much closer in which allowed me to change things up a bit. Instead of using the spomb I changed to a huge old bucket of a spod which allowed me to get bait out a lot quicker ,albeit that within 5 minutes the braid from the spod rod had sliced into my finger. Luckily I’d packed a stall!. I also changed from long distance rigs to using solar’s PVA swivels. This meant that I could tie up loads of long PVA bags and thrown them into a bag for use at a later date.

 

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The next couple of days I didn’t do much fishing. I got out of the resort with the family and did some sightseeing. The first night produced a cracking carp of 90lbs which was really nice and dark and proved to be the biggest carp of the trip.

 

90lbsiamese2_zpscde1de4b.jpg

 

 

 

I managed another fish that night a redtail of around 30lb. Redtails are stunning, with very vibrant covers and have crab like shell across the top of their heads and shoulders. They run to around 100lbs at Stuarts place, but in the wild can grow over 300lbs. :shock::shock::shock:

 

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It became apparent from catch reports from around the lake that the carp weren't really playing ball. Odd ones were getting caught, but the mekong were incredibly active. Head and shouldering all over the lake and making the presence felt. I came to the decision that I was going to pursue the mekongs (which were after all one of my targets for the trip) and if carp came along then all well and good.

 

I started to soak a load of pellets in the Pineapple glug and apply more bait as the mekong seemed to come in hard on big baits. I also started to tighten up my baiting. Instead of putting a bed down of around the marker float of maybe 12 feet wide I tried to get the spod within a tight 3 foot area. I figured that I was fishing in 14 feet of water so the natural spread in that depth would still give a reasonable area for multiple fish to come in and feed- but not spread them out too much (and hopefully give me quicker bites).

 

 

It was obvious pretty quickly that this was the way forwards as I had a screaming run whilst I still had the spod in my hand. I bent into a very angry Mekong that left a huge vortex as it exited my swim. After a quick walk through my neighbours swim (and much apologising as I walked past him. I exited the water about 100 yards from where the fight had started. After a ¾ an hour scrap the fish started to circle my inside margin. A stocky Mekong of around 100lb head and shouldered and started to pull away from me. Now I don’t mind telling you that I wasn’t in the mood to be bullied around and I clamped teh cluth right down to slow the fish. It turned the fish and started to bring it towards me. It dived for the near margin under my feet and “CRACK” the line gave out. Now I take no pleasure in leaving a hook in a fishes mouth; but the fishery runs a strict barbless policy, so I’m sure it ejected the hook pretty quickly. It has to be said though- it did give me a feel for how much pressure was possible on the line. Whilst I really was heaving hard on it- its some-way from the pressure you can give fish on 100lb briad (eg ebro cats)...so there is some finesse in it. However if you’d seen me heaving at the fish in 100 degree heat you wouldn’t have thought there wasn't much.

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