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.
