Carp, Catfish & Arapaima Fishing Safari
Former British barbel record holder Andy Harman had a new mission, a new challenge; a new angling adventure in mind. His goal was to catch the glorious trio, the hat-trick, the grand slam of Thailand; of course this can only mean Siamese giant carp, Mekong giant catfish & arapaima. The deliberate mistake readers may have noticed is that the arapaima is an Amazonian fish not a Thai fish and however true this may be; Thailand has fast become as famous for it's captive arapaima fishing as it's carp & catfish fishing.
Andy had just three days to land a specimen of each three species, the goal for Mekong catfish & arapaima was to break the 100lb barrier and any size Siamese carp which usually would have been the toughest of the three.
How wrong one can be! The first day was to set up stall at Shadow Lake for monster Mekong catfish, however first fish turned out to the least likely fish of all - a cracking Siamese carp of 40lb! So far so good and Andy was in with a shot of catching his trio, this was reinforced further as night fell over Shadow Lake and shortly after a terrible thunder storm Andy played and landed an immaculate 75lb Mekong catfish. OK - we would have liked the catfish to go 100lb but still a big specimen of both carp and catfish were now in the bag.
Day two and full of beans Andy fished Bungsamran Lake also in Bangkok - today the target was to better the Mekong catfish. After a sore and shockingly unlucky loss of a Mekong catfish around the 85lb mark, Andy soon banged into another lump. This time no disasters came and reading 95lb on the scales was Andy's new PB Mekong catfish - result!
Day three and an early start saw Andy change tact completely, now chasing the arapaima in Hua Hin Greenfield Valley - about a 3 hour drive from Bangkok. The game plan was to fish for the biggest arapaima in the lake - at around 250lb it would complete the challenge nicely. There are also a handful of other arapaima knocking around the 100lb in Greenfield and as Andy fought his way through alligator gar, pacu, redtail catfish & featherback; the biggest arapaima was just 44lb. In total Andy caught 8 small arapaima which is incredibly unlucky for just one of them to have not been a resident monster!
The missing part to this tale is indeed therefore the big arapaima, Andy has another trip planned in the new year - so keep reading.....
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