My 13 day Thai fishing adventure (day twelve)

[SIMPLE MAN]

Up for my ham and eggs,Damian arrives at 8.15 and we are back at Bungsamran at 8.45,as i am today fishing at bungalow no 1 and it is the nearest one Boosong has already got everything bar the rods there and he is soon knocking up my bait, Today it is quite a bit cooler and some of the Thai guides even have coats on,I am a little worried as bungalow 29 where i had been for the last two days was situated right at the far end and i had 25yrds of open water to my right and 100yrds clear water in front with stilted bungalows to my left so there was not too many man made snags but here at no 1 i have bungalows to my right and the stilted shed to my left which runs right across the lake so if i am lucky today i could find my self trying to keep any decent size fish from running under the shed and out the other side,also there are guys fishing on the shed and casting out 40-50yrds so even if i do hook up and keep the fish from going under the shed there is a good chance that i will catch the lines of the guys on the shed,oh well we will worry about that if and when it happens
Any way the bait is now ready and rods are soon out and whether it was the weather or the lack of bait that had been thrown in over the last few days its really slow today and even the guys float fishing from the shed don't seem to be catching as many as they had over the last couple of days,anyway about 1.00 i finally get a take and five min later i have a sawai of 33lb in the net Due to me not targeting the sawai and them having some nasty spines and being ruddy difficult to handle (they just wont stay still) i didn't really bother to photograph many of them but as i have not posted any pictures of them so far i will now put one on just so you can see what they look like



As you can see i have it on the mat and if it starts to flip around you just push it away from you and hope that it calms down
Another hour or so passes and i have another sawai of 15lb a further two hours and i have another sawai of 38lb at least this one gives me a fight and takes me 10min to land it,please don't get me wrong the sawai are a beautiful fish in there own right and if fishing in the UK and you were lucky enough to catch a thirty something pound fish you would be quite rightly so over the moon,but here there are so many of them its like gudgeon or bleak fishing and as they are not my target species they are just a pest and can be hard to get through at times.
About 3.45 one of my rods springs into life and if this is a sawai it would certainly have been a world record but Boosong says mr mokong medium mr mekong,it heads straight out and my earlier fears are now looking a strong possibility its not heading under the shed but straight out towards the guys lines who are fishing on the shed,luckily for me it stopped going any further and after 15min i had a mekong of 61lb in the net ,although it would of been nice if it was a bigger one i didn't have the pleasure of Boosong giving me 5 min of fog horn blowing


As the evening started to draw in i had another sawai of 22lb but nothing else,and just to rub salt into the wound at about the time when i was playing my mekong there was a big cheer from no 29 and Damian using his telephoto lens on his very expensive camera could see that they had caught a nice carp of about 50lb or so,still that's fishing and tomorrow at least i will be back at no 29 for my last days fishing before coming home to the great British weather

[MRG2000]

More cracking fish ,well done John ,you`ll need a holiday to get over your holiday after playing and landing that lot...

[SIMPLE MAN]

Thanks for your feed back Greenheart and for those of you who are interested i will try to get day 13 done tonight as long as i finish at 10