HOOKERS WEEKLY BLOG

Welcome to the second of our weekly catch blogs, designed to give you an overview of what’s being caught, how and by whom.  Please feel free to post any comments and questions down below and we’ll do our best to respond.

MOVES LIKE AGGER…

Rasmus had fished with us before with his friends Dennis and Rasmus 2 back at the beginning of January and his second visit to Thailand and Hookers in the space of a few weeks turned out to be a very special one.  Sporting his lucky Danish “Agger” shirt, not only did he bag our largest arapaima “Sala” at over 2.4m but he turned in an amazing Amazon brace landing our second biggest “arry” aka “The Dentist” at over 2.3m for a double that even Mr Agger would have been proud of.  Both fish fell to float fished silver barb (pla tapian) livebaits; the tapian have recently spawned and judging by the number of predators coming out on them, it’s clear they are currently dish of the day with only the odd fish succumbing to mackerel deadbaits.  And for those who don’t know, “The Dentist” got his name by knocking out the two front teeth of one of the team who helped deliver him to the lake (more on the subject of how our fish are transported in our next blog).

AMAZON REDTAILS AND ARAPAIMA GO MAD FOR SILVER BARB

As we mentioned earlier, the biggest trend this week has been the predators’ clear shift away from dead to livebait.  A crazy Saturday saw three alarms go off simultaneously in adjacent swims with Amazon Redtails the culprits while on Sunday, Shaun managed a hat-trick of the greedy scavengers in a short three hour morning session with Molnar, fishing two swims down on the South bank, also bagging a brace along with a nice siamese carp.  Steve landed a great arapaima and redtail from swim 3, while it was great to welcome back Greg who bucked the trend by snaring a nice arapaima with a margin fished mackerel deadbait.

CHAO PHRAYA CATFISH MAKES AN APPEARANCE

Another returning customer and all round good guy was the ever smiling Paul Muir.  Seeing the other arapaima put in appearances earlier in the week, Paul was set on catching one of the beasts and set himself up in swim 11.  However, the fish had other ideas and after a long hot day waiting for his first take he finally hooked up, only to see his quarry throw his hook and swim away.  Undeterred, Paul quickly re-cast and within a few minutes had hooked into another arapaima only to see it also roll and lose the hook hold.  That’s fishing…..  A change of swim the following day to 5 on the South bank quickly brought a change of fortunes though as Paul landed a mint chao phraya catfish (pla taypa/Pangasius sanitwongsei) estimated at around 40kg/88lb on, you guessed it, a float fished tapian livebait. He added to his haul with redtails, rohu, siamese and catla carp for an 8 fish haul – not a bad day at the office.