Battle of the Bars 12 turned into yet another awesome event.

Fished over 2 days with 3 teams of 2 fishing our pegs : 3 ( Heavens Point), 4 (Deep Water) and 5( Coconut swim) for 4 hours each day.

The conditions were similar for both sets of teams, overcast and muggy on a very low Lake.

Despite it seemingly raining in the rest of Thailand, Koh Samui is suffering with a severe lack of rain and my guess is the lake is about 1 metre down, and as the Lake has good depth it is only really effecting the margin fishing and we have added extra fountains and recently overhauled all the filters.

For this event we had a new team enter as Foliewadi are now back in Belgium for a while. Summerhouse Samui, based in Plai Laem is chill bar and restaurant that also has guest house facilities close to the Big Buddha and today were represented by the owner Elliott and Graham.

This event carried the usual 4000 baht first prize but also and addition Pallatrax sponsored prize for the “best” fished judged by Moi, caught using some 10mm squab “Jungle” pop ups we are trialling.

Day 1

A slow start for all.

The Boat Bar, with new personnel, struggled the whole match from Heavens Point and the French Kiss in the Coconut also struggled as Tony grappled with his hangover from the night before. As his hangover wore off the French Kiss did start to catch well in the last hour but were unable to match the Coco Beach Bar. Rob and Malcom caught steadily with 13 fish for 440lb from the Deepwater Peg. They also managed a spectacular 80lb Siamese Carp that took the early lead in the Pallatrax best fish prize , ahead of the superb 30lb Tambaqui that Jimmy caught for the Boat Bar.

Day 2

Again a slow start as the fish didn’t come straight to the feed but the Marvels went into overdrive and started catching all sorts of fish on a regular basis. It really seemed like they were catching every species in the Lake. Drew caught and Alligator Gar, Gourami and 2 Mekong Cats, Tyson and one that took nearly 20 minutes to land that was estimated at 85lbs. This battle can be seen on our Facebook page.

With 50 minutes to  go they already had 12 fish for 380lb and on course for their first ever win.

The real icing on the cake was the breath-taking Julien’s Golden Carp caught by Brownie. This was the first one caught in over a year, so had to win my Pallatrax prize for the best fish.

With Coco Beach looking on and sweating things really slowed for the Marvels but as they tried everything there was huge excitement in the Carp Channel where Elliot, the owner of the Summerhouse and hooked into a submarine. The 150lb Arapaima that he eventually caught was also shown on the Facebook live feed, where we also caught on film our webmaster, Mark Guerin, from SWS, getting in a right pickle with his partner Rob. I have never seen so much knitting going on with a rod and line.

Back at the Coconut, Marvel Construction only managed one further small Redtail ending with 400lb and an overall 2nd place

All in all 53 fish, 10 species (a record) and 1865 lbs of fish were caught. The average was down at only 35.2lbs as the many of the big fish proved elusive over the weekend.

Result

League