Freshwater river shrimp fishing

[nakluapattaya]

Anyone else had experiences with this? It became a new hobby for me last year when my GFs coworker took me to the rivers in Rayong to catch shrimp.

I was very suprised by all this new stuff. As i come from a country with only salt water sea shrimps (they are tiny as well). We were catching big guys here from 100 to 250grams! Those things were scary at first too; they have claws, like skinny lobsters with long arms! They taste different from salt water shrimp too. But they have less meat and huge heads. The Thai people like to suck out their headmeat(ish) stuff with that liver?fat in it. I think its gross and just took the body meat, pretty nice with some lemon juice and potato chips.

The lure surprised me the most; those creatures eat everything. The Thais like to lure them with smaller shrimps, and as a second choice chickenliver, but they eat anything they even bite on pork!

 

Met some nice kind people at the rivers too. One guy catches shrimp and eats it every day, thats a big luxery. Had some good times and a good laugh too. But when it came to more technical questions my Thai language started to fail. Like do they bite more often in different seasons, and weather conditions? I was told they prefer to eat in the morning, and later in the day after 5pm. And they did not know if there were other conditions like weather or season.

 

Never been a fishermen myself, but shrimp was different game. Totally loved it! And the GF is so happy when u take home those sweet river shrimps. They are expensive!

Seems to be popular pasttime activity too for guys in that region of Thailand.

[HoudiniXLogic]

I’ve fished the Bang pakong river for them with a guide before. Its a totally different game to fishing normally. First and only time I did it I kept setting the hook and losing the prawns, but by the end of the day I had understood the gist of it enough to catch a few myself. You gotta let the prawn grab the bait and put it into their mouths. 

 

However I spend a few evenings at the prawn pond by Ladprao-Wanghin 78. Its a nice place to drink beers and fish for prawns. Theres a group of Thai grandmas that like to go there and they seem to be masters at it. On a good day I might catch 8 in the 2hrs that I’m there, but those grandmas spend an hour there and haul up around 15 to 20. 

[nakluapattaya]

@HoudiniXLogic Nice read, 8 in 2hrs is still a good catch! I had yet to catch 8 in 2hrs with 1 rod.

The shrimps seem to feel excitement haha, those grannies are calm so they will bite more i guess ????

 

They bite really slow, the small ones are the hardest to catch. The big ones will begin to slowly let the bait enter their mouth, and will then agressively jerk on your rod. A barbhook is a musthave for us. But pros can get by with a regular hook.

[alanrchase]

My BIL used to fish for them in the local river. He always fished at night. He used to custom make his hooks by heating and bending sewing needles to his preferred shape. As I remember he used small strips of fish as bait with the hook threaded lengthways through the strip of fish.

[HoudiniXLogic]

On 10/31/2019 at 3:18 AM, nakluapattaya said:

@HoudiniXLogic Nice read, 8 in 2hrs is still a good catch! I had yet to catch 8 in 2hrs with 1 rod.

The shrimps seem to feel excitement haha, those grannies are calm so they will bite more i guess ????

 

They bite really slow, the small ones are the hardest to catch. The big ones will begin to slowly let the bait enter their mouth, and will then agressively jerk on your rod. A barbhook is a musthave for us. But pros can get by with a regular hook.

Pretty much. Now lots of tackle makers sell those 7-hooks. The shrimp fishing is really more of a subculture within the Thai fishing community, I’ve talked to other fishermen and most of them consider it to be quite hard (actually its because they end up being the noob at the shrimp pond while theyre usually champs at fishing parks, its not “losing face” but rather they have to start all the way from the bottom and build up their “face value” reputation all over again). 

[craighj]

Look up Bangkok Hooker on YouTube he has a couple of decent videos on this.  Never done it myself but looks like good fun and they are certainly good to eat.

 

craighj