Newsletter January 2013

Catches and news from Thailand’s only exclusive syndicated sport-fishing venue.

Introduction. Fishing in Thailand

Being the first newsletter of 2013 Jurassic Mountain Resort & Fishing Park wishes you all a Happy New Year. Last year saw huge progress as our gorgeous fishing lake evolved out of the landscape and our stylish resort rose out of the ground. This year no doubt the lake will mature further, fish will pile on weight and Jurassic Mountain Resort will make a lasting impression on everyone who gets a glimpse. We are now no more than a few months away from being open to the public; with the huge demand for such a fishery in such a location this current state of ‘pre opening’ is very important for us to prepare and organise both the fishing lake and resort to meet the demand.

Catch Reports

Jurassic Fishing Park threw up some bumper catches for the 45 anglers we limited the fishing too in January, although the cooler weather slowed down the mornings for some anglers, others enjoyed non stop action with over 20 fish in a day. Amongst all of the fish caught between these anglers, the bulk were 289 carp and 138 Amazon Redtail catfish.

For Patrick, Daniel, Darren & Tommy the Siamese carp proved a little slow in the first couple of hours of the day, picking up towards lunch time. The four anglers on a day trip from Bangkok fished in the easterly bay of the lake where after a few hours of baiting the Siamese carp began to put in an appearance offering terrific fights on our well-balanced carp tackle. Ending up with 16 fish between them was deemed a good days fishing by all, despite the fact we knew the lake could be much more productive. Patrick came very close to making the day even more memorable as he placed his dead-bait tight to the margins where he had spotted an arapaima moving regularly. With a terrific explosion of water in the shallow margins and an awesome display of torpedo like disruption the arapaima bolted and immediately threw the hook as everyone starred on in amazement and disbelief.

Having spent the past 8 years writing catch reports of fish caught from venues all over Thailand – we know what average numbers of fish each venue typically produces. We were therefore gladly surprised at our own venue’s catch statistics of our primary species. During October, November and December 2012 there were 72 arapaima captures, 1418 Siamese carp landed and 417 Amazon redtail catfish graced the banks along with lower numbers of other species. These catches were taken between 136 of the anglers we accepted bookings from, needless to say most of them caught upwards of 10 carp each in a day session. One angler in particular that enjoyed the fruits of our well stocked carp fishery was Stretton Honor from England. Being a regular visitor to the Thai fishing scene Stretton has caught huge fish of varying species but nowhere before had he enjoyed such prolific numbers of carp, landing over 30 Siamese carp and catla to 55lb in a single day session which stands as our lake record at present, although catches of 20 plus carp have been common place.

Robert Brooks was granted a one-day pass by his wife for fishing while on their holiday. Of course for Robert the reason for coming to Thailand was fishing whereas his wife may argue that the reason was a holiday! Either way it must be said that I was very content sat chatting to Robert who hails from Lowestoft – a fellow Suffolk angler which is something of a rarity in Thailand. It was quite surreal sat by a lake in the Thai countryside chatting with broad Suffolk accents to one another! Robert’s expectations of the days fishing were met with 7 Siamese carp and 7 catla catla (Indian carp) finished with a bonus redtail catfish. He can now confidently report to his wife that the Thailand holiday was a success!

Fanatic fishing couple Darren & Charlene from England ventured a long way from their own private carp fishing lake in France to sample the Siamese carp action at Jurassic. Fishing in a swim each they landed a total of 12 carp and 3 redtail catfish between them, mostly falling to ‘method’ fished ground baits beneath a float.

The first arapaima in January fell to our first Thai angler ‘Witichai’ who was accompanied by his brother-in-law Julian Barnwell. Of course in keeping with the tradition of ‘classic’ angling tales – Witichai had only fished once before and Julian was keen to ‘teach’ him! Within five minutes of arriving the first run saw Julian insisting on Witichai getting stuck straight in – after all the run did come to the carp rod so of course it could not have been an arapaima……..To Witichai’s surprise and probably horror he found himself fighting an arapaima proportionate to himself using light tackle meant for much smaller fish. His fishing lesson began very quickly as he was coached while for half an hour he played out his trophy fish. Joking aside Julian has caught huge fish before and was genuinely delighted for Witichai to experience catching a specimen on his own soil that many anglers travel thousands of miles and spend weeks trying to catch.

Fishing is no different from any sporting challenge in terms of emotional energy and physcology. Mark Hulmes experienced this first hand on his days fishing Jurassic Fishing Park as he got off to a slow start. The day began with terrible conditions and then when finally the first run did appear it resulted in a lost fish which then left Mark a little demoralised. Soon after lunch it was as if it were a different day altogether as Mark spent more time with his rod bent into a fish than sat down. He began enjoying incredible fights from powerful carp one after another finishing finally on a dozen landed fish. Mark was over the moon with delight and wrote a lovely email to us thanking us for the day and saying what a wonderful time he had and can not wait to return. Had you asked Mark before lunch what he thought the answer would have been very different. it just goes to show that fishing too like many sports can be an emotional roller coaster for both the angler and the fishery owners.

The few snakehead that are stocked in Jurassic are caught from time to time and make an intriguing bonus catch for some anglers. They are getting fatter and fatter with all the dead-bait going in the lake not to mention the thousands of java barb that act like ‘cannon fodder’ to them. However for a few days in January one particular swim on the western bank saw every snakehead in the lake shoal up to intercept every dead and live bait dropped along the three occupying swims. That particular bank had been fished quite hard over a few days and received constant baiting which caused this abnormal behaviour from the snakehead which in natural cases would typically not feed in this fashion. This  resulted in a few bite-offs for UK angler Mark and his wife Carol, regulars on the Thai fishing scene now for several years.

Philippine anglers Alvin and his father Ariel enjoyed some spectacular carp fishing action together mid January banking 10 catla carp, 6 Siamese carp and 6 Amazon redtail catfish. One of the many delights of owning a fishery is meeting the diverse world of visiting anglers from all over the globe. It is not so often that we receive anglers from the Philippines and so was a particular pleasure to get to know Alvin and Ariel who are two very kind guys with very interesting lives. To find about more about Ariel’s family business please visit http://www.arielspoint.com/ They also own a remarkably successful hotel in the Philippines offering all kinds of adventure tours bolted on at Hotel Boracey. Anyone visiting the Philippines should take a look at their website.

Belgian and English fishing buddies Paul and Patrick formed the United Angling Nations at Jurassic over two days fishing. Their first day was at the end of a three day stormy weather front which put the carp off the feed a little producing just eight carp on their first day. The next day however the conditions improved and they banked over twenty fish including many redtail catfish.

Jurassic’s first Ukrainian anglers graced the banks and bought with them some luck too. Leonid, Roman & Katya not only battled with over twenty Siamese carp & redtail catfish during the day but also landed two arapaima in quick succession. Roman is a successful fishing charter boat captain by trade – more details can be found at www.capitanroman.com.

Fishing friends Kaare and Nils from Denmark will be familiar names to regular followers of the fishing scene in Thailand and to our newsletters. Not only have they fished most venues worth fishing in Thailand and caught giant fish from each place but they also own one of the villas on Jurassic Mountain Resort making them life members of Jurassic Fishing Park. Their latest visit to Thailand saw the specimen hunting duo take advantage of their new fishing heaven with two days leisurely fishing at Jurassic. On Kaare’s last visit he caught a huge arapaima with seemingly great ease for which everyone was very pleased for him. His first days fishing this visit again saw Kaare quite casually catch another monstrous arapaima while Nils was busy enjoying sport from Siamese carp. Their second and last days fishing for this visit was also accompanied by a fellow fishing buddy Irik who while catching plenty of carp and redtail catfish regretfully could not tempt any arapaima. Being their guest and not having the same privilege of being a life member, Kaare and Nils thought it only fair and decent to offer Irik the swim with what was considered the most chance of catching an arapaima from. Even still Kaare manages to catches the only arapaima of the day making it a full house of three arapaima in three trips!

It would be far too much to mention everyone who fished with us in January but more angler’s catches can been viewed on our website’s gallery. We try to get a photo of every Jurassic angler amongst the flurry of work getting the fishery and resort ready for opening but still some slip through the net. In which case if anyone we have missed would like their photo added to the website’s gallery please email us a copy. There is space in this January newsletter however to mention one final angler – Tim Chapple. An avid fisherman and wonderful character who fished for two days during his Thailand holiday with his lovely wife Jo. The first day Tim fished alone and got into a few carp but his enthusiasm was attached to the Amazon redtail catfish which really got their heads down and provided Tim with a dozen specimens by the end of the day. Day two and Jo accompanied Tim fishing – had she known how comfortable and pleasant a place Jurassic was Jo would have joined Tim the day before too. By about late afternoon and at least a dozen redtail catfish later I was becoming slightly concerned that Tim’s chances of an arapaima was slim if we didn’t move away from the redtails but absolutely loved his response to my concern ‘oh I don’t care about catching arapaima I would much rather catch redtails!’ Brilliant – I thought it was wonderful how Tim was so enthusiastic about the redtail catfish to the point where he was virtually trying to avoid the arapaima. The total count for redtail catfish by the end of his last day was 26!

Fishery News and Stocking

It’s been suggested to us by visiting anglers and anglers yet to visit that we should include in our newsletters information about special fish we stock. Despite it not always being possible to weigh all fish species we introduce, we can certainly photograph them. Well big stocking news for January came in the form of two arapaima so big that each specimen had to be lifted in a special sling by a crane! The lake these specimens came from had steep banks and this was the owner of the fishes idea, not ours, but it did seem to work out fine, and now Jurassic is the proud owner of some 2.5MTR + Arapaima, or somewhere in the region of 260lbs.  It is always worrying when new fish are stocked after traveling across the country to their new home. The larger the fish the more risk of it not making the journey or even not taking to its’ new environment and dying days later. Thankfully our team of fish movers and fish handlers have to this day done a great job and all our fish have gone on to not just live in Jurassic but thrive – putting on weight at a tremendous rate. It may be tempting fate but it must be mentioned that in all the arapaima captures (over 100 catches now) we have not lost a single one which is mostly due to our handling procedures carefully taught to our lake gillies. In all the years of guiding anglers to fisheries all over the country this is indeed a very rare claim for any fishery.

Speaking of lake gillies, it has now been observed by many anglers that ‘Lat’ one of our gillies looks like the Thai version of Johnny Depp! When first pointed out to Lat this observation it did not mean anything to him as he did not know who Johnny Depp was – but after showing him photos from google images he of course was rather pleased about people thinking there was a resemblance.

Jurassic Mountain Resort – Project News

Really the resort alone should be worthy of it’s own dedicated newsletter especially with all the progress to report. The clubhouse is virtually completed and soon to be fitted out with a commercial kitchen in readiness for the restaurant and bar to open soon. The lake is also about to be extended slightly to lap under the wooden decking of the dining terrace adjoined to the front of the clubhouse. This along with the jungle of palm trees being planted by crane around the resort is set to be something quite special indeed. The resort as a whole is on target to be finished by spring in time for the bookings which have been filling the calendar for fishing holidays throughout this year, so if your coming to Thailand to fish, don’t miss your opportunity come and see us.

Foot Note

The Jurassic Team would like to thank all of our guests to date who have visited us at Jurassic Fishing Park and to those who are taking a keen interest in our fishery and resort development, a special thanks to our villa owners – your support has made this all possible.  We look forward to seeing you all throughout 2013 and meanwhile we wish you a happy and safe start to the New Year.

We’d also like to thank Bird’s Tackle of Ipswich for sponsoring us with many tackle items. Please visit their website Birds Tackle  for all your tackle needs. The showroom and tackle store is based in Ipswich but their gigantic online shopping website distributes UK country wide. With an incredible range of tackle stocked and their knowledgeable team of staff we recommend shopping at Birds Tackle.

Tight Lines

Eddie Mounce & The Jurassic Team