In my opinion they are one of the strongest fresh water fish and put up an amazing back breaking fight.I caught my very first Mekong bottom fishing with a pop up .I have learned a lot since then and have now changed tactics.
Now my preferred method is float fishing with braided line. When they take the bait the line just screams off the reel .These fish may look big and slow but they are so fast you couldn't believe it
You have such a direct contact with the fish using the braid it is really an unforgiving fight.
There are huge Mekong Catfish here at Gillhams fishing resort Krabi Thailand and the world record at the time of this blog was 191lbs. The prior world record also from Gilliam's was 185 lbs.
After catching numerous fish in the 100lb range I think I am becoming a little obsessed with catching these fish and just want to catch bigger and bigger fish .
I recently had the most amazing 3 days fishing i can remember .
I was float fishing Oct 1st and landed a 180lb fish which was just 5lbs short of the old world record and 11lbs shy of the current record .The fish put up a truly back breaking fight.
I had to jump in the lake and chase the fish up the lake which was quite an experience in itself.
After catching this fish I started to think .WOW what if I could get the work record??? as there are fish in the lake which were stocked up to 300lbs.I figured there is a long way between 191 and 300lbs.
On Oct 2nd around the same time of day and fishing in the same area my rod screamed off and i was into another good fish . This fish fought just as hard as the 180lber from the day before but was only around 130lbs.
I was quite excited to catch 2 big fish ion consecutive days and was back at it the next afternoon .
I hooked another fish around 4pm and was convinced this was something huge.
Again I had to jump in the lake to chase the fish as I was running out of line and couldn't stop the fish . I realized jumping in the lake was losing my height advantage on the fish and fighting him on his own turf so I think I was a little late to jump in and lost the fish as it went round a corned at the end of the lake . I was quite upset to say the least when the line snapped.
I am not one to give up so I rigged up the rod again and cast right back out . 2 casts later the float shot off again and i was into another fish. After an awesome fight of about 40 minutes i landed what was estimated to be a 190lb fish . I couldn't get any closer to the record with out breaking it ..
I fished hard for the next week but couldn't get anything over 140lbs. i thought the only way to get something in the net over the record was to get in there myself . No record but what an awesome time fishing for my now favorite fish.
No comments:
Post a Comment