Rompin sailfish fishing charter. Fly fishing Malaysia Borneo Mongolia Maldives Thailand
This is the second Bob I’m arapaima fishing with in Thailand. Both Bob hails from Australia. Some things are funny like that.
This trip, by the way, happened in May 2015.
Amazonbkk is still the place for arapaima in Thailand (probably the region) as they have a healthy population of fish stocked and some of them are huge, real monsters with the largest exceeding 100kg or over 200 pounds!
However, like many catch and release ponds the fish gets more difficult to fool with each visit.
When you fly fish at IT (pronounced, it) Monster Lake, you will catch fish by just casting your fly out and stripping. But when the bite slows down, it’s not a bad idea to chum with bait fish to turn the bite on.
You will likely be fishing this lake for just one day, why not attempt to catch as many species as possible, as many monsters as possible and make the most of the slow period, too.
With a wide variety of fish species here, you never quite know for certain what will bite next, although the king of the lake is definitely the Amazon redtail catfish, some of which have grown to impressive proportions.
Wanted to show you guys what flies we used during our last fishing trip in the ponds of Thailand. Click Fly fishing for arapaima to see one of the post.
The flies were used to target arapaima, amazon redtail catfish, alligator gar and a myriad of others.
If you look at these flies and think they’ll probably work for many other species, you’re right. They can also be used in the saltwater.
All flies are tied by Nick Ooi.
Peacock bass often burst into a feeding frenzy as they hunt in a pack. These frenzies however, happens quickly and ends quickly.
The good thing is if you can get your lure or fly into or near to them, they will usually strike it.
Keep a lookout as some of these are rather unspectacular swirls on the surface.
Remember to release your catch quickly so we all can have more fish to catch. And release again.
Here’s a short video of a spotted fish that quickly took the fly.
Subscribe to my Youtube channel for more videos and leave a comment below and share your peacock bass fishing experience or questions you may have.
FLY FISHING IN ROYAL BELUM STATE PARK TEMENGGOR MALAYSIA: Things don’t always go as planned. The popper fly has a short wire trace attached and was intended for the toman (giant snakehead) but a sebarau slammed on it instead.
On this very same trip, the split-tail fly I had tied on for sebarau with no wire-trace, was taken by a toman instead. Watch the video of that here. I love it!
Watch the video below of Nick of Tacklebox Adventures who also landed some decent sized sebarau.
Some fly fishing equipment tips for Royal Belum
I don’t know about Bob, but coming from the recent twin tragedies of the Malaysian Airline flights, namely MH370 and MH17, I am a little nervous taking another MH flight into Bangkok.
Having said that, the sunset scene from the skies over Bangkok city was breathtaking and took my mind off the jitters.
Our flight landed in the early evening hours in Bangkok from Kuala Lumpur with Bob having flown in straight from Sydney.
Understandably, Bob must be really tired from all that traveling. I know I would. Our plan was to check in straight into the hotel and will leave at 0400 hrs the next morning on a 2 hours drive to our first destination, AmazonBKK pond.
In hindsight, it may have been better for us to spend one extra day in Bangkok just hanging out so that Bob could be better rested and better prepared for the two days of fly-fishing sessions for mega-sized fishes.
If you want to catch arapaima in the wild (who doesn’t?), you need to either invest in a fair bit of time and spend a bundle of cash and head to the Amazon rivers of South America which would be quite an adventure.
One of the other good alternative is to head to Thailand where you can be quite certain to land at least one arapaima. Possibly more as there are quite a few around in the many ponds across the country. At last count this particular operator claimed there are more than 150 arapaima in their pond (very believable when you look at the place) with a good number of fish exceeding the 100kg (220 pounds) mark.
This trip is a prelude to Bob’s sailfish fishing trip at Kuala Rompin, the third consecutive year Bob’s fishing with JW.
It’ll work as a way to get a little bit more familiar to the new heavy tackle that he’ll be using. Bob managed to hook a couple of arapaima and landed an impressive variety of fish species at AmazonBKK. However, landing an arapaima eluded him this time.
Next stop, IT Monster Lake…
