Exciting Developments on the Fishing Front

We (those of us who own a house on this small estate in sunny Phuket) have been grizzling for 3 years about our ever shrinking lake. We kept being told that everything will be sorted....and yesterday, on my return from our latest adventure, I see the lake has tripled in size. As I write, there are four diggers and two dredgers out there hard at it. This is great news. The funding is coming from the owner of the new project on the 'other side' of the lake....he needs the view to sell his new properties!! Goodo!! I need to see how things are going to pan out as regards the building workers constantly netting the lake before I consider a stocking programme. When the new project is finished, the builders (from Burma) will leave and security will be fitted into place....hopefully that will be the time to sort out this lake.

 

 

Meanwhile....as promised....we travelled north yeasterday and left Phuket to go into the wilds of Phang Gna where Canadian Mike Bailey is working hard on his Fishing Resort project. Mike has got a website  www.exoticfishingthailand.com and a Blog on http://exoticfishingthai.blogspot.com  which he tries to update each week.

 This another massive undertaking and Mike is another man to be admired for having the vision and courage to take on such a project. I cannot imagine how difficult such work must be with the inevitable mountain of beuocracy he must face on a daily basis with Thailand's laws and in communicating with the Thai workforce.  A good deal of work has already been done and the resort is well underway. The photograph above shows work taking place in digging out the main lake which will be pretty enormous ith depths to 5.5 metres. The scenery is stunning with a massive single Karst backdrop....it's going to be spectacular.

 There are 8 'rearing stock ' ponds already in place and they are full of big fish already including many arapami. The aim is to stock the lake with 50 different species. At this point I should say that I am sure Mike has gone into MUCH more detail on his website and blog so I urge you to take a look.

 Mike has held back from feeding until we arrived so we were treated to watching enormous fish taking the small fish (herring?) being thrown in. The arapima suck the feed in with a loud snapping sound...it's like gunshots going off....pretty impressive. Many of the fish are already in the 80kg range and will be considerably larger by November 2013 when Mike hopes to open to the fishing public.

 Here's another of the rearing ponds. When I return in December of this year, I shall revisit and take photogrpahs from the same angles to show how much things have changed...as I am sure they will have!!

And back to another view of the mainlake.


In a couple of hours I will be sitting in my favourite place, the arrivals area of Phuket Airport waiting for another of our angling guests, Keith, to arrive. He gets in at 2030 so it will be a very short stop over at my place before we leave at 0700 tomorrow to catch the ferry to Ao Nang, Krabi, where he, Steve and myself have 5 days of fishing at Mr Stuart Gillham's amazing resort.

You may recall that just before Xmas I enjoyed catching two catfish in the 200lb range and Mr Jeff Whiitard had two arapima is the 250lb range. We caught a number of other species as well and witnessed carp to 100lb being caught with several very top level anglers there to admire.

Steve (Gilbank...see earlier postings) is already amazed with what we've caught in the Phuket Fishing Park with carp to 15kg and catfish to about 12kg. I do hope he and Keith latch into some monster fish to make this holiday one that will never be forgotten!!

This has already been the best 'season' over here with so much going on...I can only repeat what Steve keeps saying...that you'd be MAD not to take this opportunity to come and stay in Phuket whilst I have this adventure going on!!!!!