As it had been a few months since our previous visit and a keen fisherman friend was in town we decided a return to Bungsamran was in order.

Bangkok, Thailand. Wednesday 17th December 2014.

We arrived at Bungsamran about 10.15am, this time we didn’t employ the services of a guide but all the guides appeared to be using ready prepared and highly scented buckets of rice husks, ฿520 for a medium sized bucket little more than half full.

I started the day by pulling the hook out of the first two fish I had hooked, this happened quite a few times throughout the day. Eventually I landed the first Mekong, too small to bother with the scales but it looked around 20kg. Then another in the low twenties followed by a striped catfish of about 8kg.

I then hooked into a monster but he wrapped himself around one of the pier supports, I couldn’t free him and ended up snapping the line. I landed four more Mekongs, the largest weighed in at 34.1kg.

I then hooked another decent sized fish. After a while I got him in close, he decided to head under the pier. Remembering what happened last time and losing what was probably the largest fish I had ever hooked I applied considerable force to the rod to pull him out. He swam harder, I applied more force, the rod bent to about 135° shortly before snapping into two. As it was about 8:15 in the evening I decided to call it a day.

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An 8am start from Pattaya and some fairly light traffic in Bangkok had us arrive at Bungsamran for 10am. Having never fished there before and reading some stories of people catching nothing on their first visit, we decided it best to pay the ฿1,000 for a guide for the day.

The fishing fee for foreigners is ฿2,000, Thais pay ฿400. With a sack of ground rice husks (“rrum khao” in Thai) ฿620, and the guide choosing 6 bottles of bait flavourings at ฿30 each, between the two of us we paid ฿5,800.

The guide asked us what tackle we had, I showed him some feeders, floats and a hook link ready made up with 80lb braid and a Gamakatsu size 17 hook which he sneered at. He then asked for ฿200 to buy some more tackle. He returned about 15 minutes later with some large feeders, some floats similar to the ones I already had and and a packet of size 17 Gamakatsu hooks.

We left the rigging to the guide, the basic set up is a large float running free on the main line, an elastic band or float stopper about 8′ – 10′ above the float, a very large in-line coil feeder and 4 1/2″ braided hook link with size 17 hook. In the absence of any bait two polystyrene balls are put on the hook to make it neutrally buoyant.

The fishing was a little slow, the first three fish we landed were all striped catfish around the 12Kg mark, then the Mekongs started to take the bait. The first one I landed tipped the scales at 28Kg. My fishing buddy then hauled out a Siamese carp weighing in at 22.1Kg.

With the guide making massive bait balls (approximately 5″ in diameter) the large bag of bait didn’t last very long, we spent another ฿460 on bait and flavourings. Despite costing us ฿1,000 the guide packed up 5pm leaving us to fend for ourselves.

My buddy then landed the catch of the day, it was quite a struggle to get it on the scales, a Mekong of 48.3Kg. In ten and a half hours I landed 6 striped catfish and 11 Mekong catfish, the largest weighing in at 32.4Kg with 4 more in excess of 25Kg.

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