Fly Fishing the Kingdom - Intro

 

I clearly remember my father bringing home a copy of some Amazonian sports fishing magazine and on the cover- a giant Arapaima or Piraracu.  He also brought back a scale from the fish so coarse it could be used as sand paper.  This set my imagination wild and ever since that day it has been a dream of mine to catch one of these prehistoric beasts.

The opportunity came about when the company I work for decided to take the brokers to Phuket on our yearly incentive.  I quickly popped "fly fishing in Thailand" in Google and all sorts of interesting suggestions came up...  It looked like I might get a shot at an Arapaima sooner that I thought.

Aquaculture and the Aquarium industry of Thailand have spawned an interesting off shoot- sports fishing.  There are lakes stocked with everything from Arapaima Gigas to Atlantic Tarpon to Bull Sharks (freshwater).  And then there are Saltwater lakes that stock all sorts of other species.

In the weeks leading up to my departure I began to prep for these fish.  I got beaten up badly by fish in structure only a few weeks ago in the Maldives and realized the strength and quality of my rigging would determine my success.  Over 30lbs I'm in the dark- so using Flytalks forum I managed to get in touch with Karl Dannenberg, a man who has much experience caching massive fish on fly and retro fitting heavy offshore techniques to fly fishing set ups.  He showed me everything I needed to know from the Bimini/Albright/Dacron connection in my 100lb braid backing to my Dacron spliced loop on the leader end straight through to the knots used on the straight 80lb leader section.  Without the inherited knowledge this would only be a story of lost fish.

Rig-
12 wt Sage xi2
Tibor Riptide
100lb Dyneema Braid Backing
Rio leviathan 70lb core
50/80lb Seaguar Flouro Leader

 

(from left to right) White Elec Tape / 80lb Kingfisher Braid / Sci Angler 600 grain tropic / Rio Inter 12wt / Rio Leviathan 550g Floating / 30lb Flouro / 50lb Flouro / 60lb Fouro / 80lb Flouro / 30lb Mono / 100lb Mono

Flies:

 

 

12 fish (3 landed)

Not Used

2 hours casting - No Fish/Takes

 

1 hour casting - No Fish/Takes

1 hour casting - No Fish/Takes

2 hours casting - No Fish/Takes

2 hours casting - 2 Takes (no hookups)

 

12 fish (3 landed)

2 hours casting - No Fish/Takes

2 hours casting - No Fish/Takes

2 hours casting - 2 Takes (no hookups)

Not Fished

 

1 hour casting - No Fish/Takes