How do I get my Pla Beuk to bite.

[Jotham79]

I have about 58 Pla Beuk in a pond that are around 3 kg each. I know they are there because I put them there from another pond. I have no problem catching Sawai or Esok and they (pla beuk) do occasionally roll. I haven’t hooked one since they were about 1KG. When they were less than a kg they took bait. How can I get them to bite ( and haven't in almost 2 years). The only thing I haven’t tried is a really large bait.

[jackinbkk]

There was a fishing park in Phuket where a guy got some wild pla buek from another lake(cheap deal). They were really difficult to catch. Its seemed like according to a lot of other anglers, the fish had been conditioned to the natural foods in the water. They just wouldn't touch any bait.

In some lakes the absolute best bait is the massaged bread. Take bread, turn it into bread crumb through a blender etc, then add water and mix it until it forms a sticky paste. A bit wetter than a dough. The problem you may have is the buek just being outnumbered by the sawai. Fish the sticky paste on a hook, with some foam on it to make it a bit buoyant. Hook to swivel should be about 14 inches to allow it to get into the bueks mouth easily.

A second approach is lam on a feeder, the same as used as BSR. Don't bait the hook. That will mean only the bigger fish tend to hook themselves as they suck in the powder. The lam powder must be fished as dry as possible to make sure it rains down off the feeder and doesn't stick in a solid lump. Fish it between 1.8m and 2.5m, aim to fish over deeper spots of the lake if you can and in places where the fish feel safest. i.e. Furthest away from humans.

Edited January 24, 2014 by jackinbkk

[jackinbkk]

http://youtu.be/hv0OyLJp2LI

You probably don't need to add flavour at this time.

Whatever you use as feed on a daily basis (if you do that) will probably be the most effective bait to be honest. Eventually the fish should get used to it and the morning feed is safe to them. Very little catches happen for the quantity of bait put in during feeds in lakes.

Edited January 24, 2014 by jackinbkk

[Jotham79]

My pond is maybe just over a rai and is almost 4 meters deep. I don't know about the sawai ratio as there should only be about 30-40 in there (left from a stocking several yeas ago), but I have caught several recently around 1 kg and recently one of 5 kg so I think they are reproducing. I don't feed regularly as there are a ton of other fish like pla maw, tilapia, pla Kiyang, eels, ple esuk, pla boo, pla Tapian, pla kao, pla kasil, pla duk, and pla chon so it is not a controlled situation. I only fish the pond when I am there at New Years and during the summer. The wife throws some bread in every week or so because she likes to watch the fish feed and we fertilize it with chicken manure every couple of weeks or so. We have manila tamarind around the edges and all the fish go nuts over the falling fruit (January-March). You have given me some ideas. Worst case scenario, I net one out when I want to eat one, but they aren't costing me anything.

I read a few years ago that to get wild pla beuk to feed the put a gunny sack of lam out on the bottom with a couple of slashes and give them a couple of weeks and I may do that on a smaller scale when I retire in a year.

[jackinbkk]

My pond is maybe just over a rai and is almost 4 meters deep. I don't know about the sawai ratio as there should only be about 30-40 in there (left from a stocking several yeas ago), but I have caught several recently around 1 kg and recently one of 5 kg so I think they are reproducing. I don't feed regularly as there are a ton of other fish like pla maw, tilapia, pla Kiyang, eels, ple esuk, pla boo, pla Tapian, pla kao, pla kasil, pla duk, and pla chon so it is not a controlled situation. I only fish the pond when I am there at New Years and during the summer. The wife throws some bread in every week or so because she likes to watch the fish feed and we fertilize it with chicken manure every couple of weeks or so. We have manila tamarind around the edges and all the fish go nuts over the falling fruit (January-March). You have given me some ideas. Worst case scenario, I net one out when I want to eat one, but they aren't costing me anything.

I read a few years ago that to get wild pla beuk to feed the put a gunny sack of lam out on the bottom with a couple of slashes and give them a couple of weeks and I may do that on a smaller scale when I retire in a year.

I think the majority of wild buek are caught in gill nets. Put nets in too small for the buek to swim through but large enough for the smaller species. I've seen wild fish caught with cast nets as well.

I can understand not feeding the lake. Thai waters are like a soup. So much plant and animal life in it from all that sunlight, water and heat.

Bread on a coil feeder will work but it will catch sawai also. There may be one particular place where more buek are located. In places like parks you'd often find (throwing bread etc in the water) that small fish would hit it first, but over time larger and larger fish would move in. They probably hear the commotion and start to smell the food. It could help to bait an area with little small bits of bait over an hour. In time the buek may move in.

At one lake I fished you'd rarely catch a thing unless you put your bait up against a net at the opposite side of the lake, used to divide the lake in two.

It was probably quite safe for them as it took some effort to get a bait there but they also probably ate the things growing on and around the nets. i.e. weed, shrimp, small fry and insects.

One thing I wonder about is use of an aerator. Get lots of oxygen in the water to supercharge the fish into life.

It's a nice challenge. 1 rai is a good size for your own lake.

-Jack