Steve in Action

Aha...now here is a good angler staying with me. Steve Gilbank, a regular customer aboard Offshore Rebel, also loves his freshwater fishing. Look at him gazing lovingly at his monster carp caught in England.

 

 When we arrived at Phuket Fishing Park, I explained to Steve how powerful the fish are and that you MUST play them with a very light drag. Also, if you set the rod up in the rod rest without a VERY light drag, the fish will drag your rod and rod rest into the lake...and it's all gone!! Of course he didn't believe me!!

 Here we are..bent into one of the fish...and of course it broke him. Now, the thing to remember is that Steve is an extremely good angler and those of you who have fished with him aboard the Rebel will know just how good he is. So, even though he has tamed 20lb carb on 12lb line, the first couple of fish here really took him by surprise. I don't know if these buggars are on steroids...but they are seriously powerful. If you try to stop them then your line will snap...even though we were on 22lb breaking strain. Anyhow, Steve soon got over the shock of these rascals....and the first fish came in....a fine fruit eating pirhana.

 I think these things are called packoo or something like this....I've gotta sort my names out for these things. The fight was terrific....they just go on and on...tireless is seems.

 And now our gallant angler is into his stride and bent into another lively rascal...which is now firmly under his control...no more bust-ups!!!

 A nice catfish......ha ha...I know what's coming next week! This catfish weighed about 8kg and fought like a demon...but Steve ain't gonna believe what's in store for him at Gillhams!!!! This fish took about 10 minutes to land....you may recall it took me 90 minutes to get my catfish to the net at Gillhams...but it was 87kg heavier than this baby.

We had a brilliant end to the day....we hit a double on the carp....and of course you can see who got the biggest. Well, I'm a darn professional ain't I??? As it happens, Steve had cast his rod out and was fiddling around with something instead of paying attention to his tackle....and it was on the verge of being pulled into the lake so I pounced and started to play the fish...which should have been his....and then my rod took off so Steve had to dive for that one and rescue it...so there we were playing each other's fish!!!!

It's a great pleasure having Steve here because he really appreciates just how special the fishing is here...I mean, look at his face with his Phuket caught carp and compare it with his dinky little thing caught in England!!

We can't go to the lake again this week...buggar me, we're busy. Tomorrow we're going diving and on Friday we're off to see a new lake project somewhere north of Phuket....it sounds extremely interesting and may offer another adventure 'next' year.

On Saturday we meet Keith, a fish farmer and brilliant carp angler, who arrives and early Sunday morning we're off to Krabi for four days at Stuart Gillham's fishery again. If we do as well as we did with Jeff and Spike, the lads are gonna be on 7th heaven. They can't believe I caught catfish OVER 200lb and  Jeff's Arapimi was in excess of 240lb....let's hope it works for the boys!!

This 'season' over here in Phuket has turned into something really special...we've had some amazing fishing at sea and in the lake. Brilliant fun...especially when you've got people who realise just how amazing all this is. We were diving yesterday....Steve loved that as well....photographs will follow after tomorrow's diving session!!