Any one watch National Geographic last night?

They had a show about big fish, which talked about white sturgeon and blue cats. The segment on sturgeon talked about fishing them in the San Fransico bay and it’s delta. One guy caught a 9.5′ sturgeon which weighed over 450 pounds. It took him over 6 hours to reel it in. That mark should be BK’s goal for next year’s sturgeon excursion (we’ll have to allow him some wiggle room since lake sturgeon do not get as big as white sturgeon).

The blue cat segment talked about the record blue cat being caught down by Alton. IL, where the Missouri and Mississippi rivers meet. I can’t remember the exact weight… am thinking over 140 pounds.

Two impressive fish to say the least!

I saw an In-Fisherman video called ‘Freshwater Monsters’ or something like that. They showed sturgeon fishing in the Colorado River. The guide was jumping out of the boat to pose with some 6 foot plus monsters.

I watched it – kind of neat to see the kind of fish that exist out there. Those Mekong Cats were huge too.

Missed that show..like usual.

Castandblast has caught many of the mekong cats and has an impressive photo with his white sturgeon. The are pretty impressive to see.

Those would be cool to see. Can he post them?

I’ll ask him to.

That show was awesome. I have it on my dvr. Saved. They showed some for the monster that I only seen in pictures. That 9 foot white sturgeon was awesome. But it is dead and a record.

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That show was awesome. I have it on my dvr. Saved. They showed some for the monster that I only seen in pictures. That 9 foot white sturgeon was awesome. But it is dead and a record.

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DVR……you have all the toys

I hate to say it but C&B has a great pic of him holding a white sturgeon too!

He is out of town for a while so he can’t post either pic for a while. Here is his 8 footer

I spent a year in Thailand and was able to do a little fishing for the natives there. Here is what I came up with. These first pics are of the Giant Mekong Catfish. I caught several of these. The biggest is about 65lbs. They are vegetarians and we use bread bait or sticky rice to catch them. Enjoy!

The next Catfish is very similar but is more silvery in color and don’t get as big. they are called the Striped Catfish or in Thai, “Plah Sawai.” Also vegetarians.

Now these next ones are the meat eaters of the catfish family over there. In fact, the Tilapia you see is what they eat and it is no problem to swallow that size either. They are called Chao Paya in Thai. They have really cool long spines on them.

This next one is a small “Giant Snakehead.” They get much bigger than this and are real fun to catch.

This last one is called a jungle perch. They are a schooling fish and when one is caught usaully others are around. Kind of like our White Bass here. They take spinners or just about anything with a flash.

Most Excellent post AND pictures castandblast!!
Thanks….

You are one lucky guy!!!

That last cat is really cool looking.

Thanks for the pictures C&B!

Thanks for sharing the pics Castandblast! Very cool!!!

Thanks for sharing pics and your experience. Sounds like one for the books mate! We all know there is a universal language of fishing. But working out some of the details….. I would be curious to know how you worked through that.

WOW

Hey Flatcaster,
It wasn’t easy working out the details but I had lived there for one year and did receive some intense language study which helped. I also found some Thai people who spoke English quite well. I made friends with a Thai man who ran a fishing shop over there and was able to go fishing with him on some occassions (he also spoke ok English). I guess you just make due with what you’re given. Where there’s a will there’s a way. The Thai people are also friendly and very helpful. I would ask a lot of questions about fishing while over there.

One of my favorite places to fish is called Bung Sam Lan. It’s a fishing pay park in Bangkok. It’s all catch and release fishing. I originally found out about it from reading an issue of Fishing Facts magazine. After reading about it the reseach began and it didn’t take long for me to find it. They have big fish in there too. All of the Cats I caught are from there. Some days I had 500+ lbs. of cats caught at that park. I fished at that park about 5 times during my one year over there.

Many of the other places I fished in Northeast Thailand were fished to death by nets. Remember there is no DNR here or any regulation on fishing at all. It is mostly subsistant fishing. The people live off what they catch. This makes quality go down for sportfishing.

Northwest Thailand has two awesome reservoirs for fishing though. They are in the jungle more and not many people live there which makes the fishing much better.

Thanks for the pics Cast,

I especially like the channel cat with the funky dorsal fin. gonna need a bigger boat.

That looks like what they call a sail fish in the Atlantic.

on again right now!

and it appears that part II premiers next at 11:00

I just saw the Marlin sneak peek online. That is insane, but what great sportsmen. When that thing jumps at the boat you can see it is ridiculously big. I’ll have to DVR that show.

You can get emailed reminders here: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/ET/daily/20071014.html

Also Airs:

Sunday, October 21, 1P

Friday, November 30, 8P

It was a good one. They had an all new one on HOOKED AGAIN, MONSTER FISH.

I DVRed it. Have to say my favorite…. Doug Stangee in 05 with Kirk Kirkland going after Alligator Gar!
What a monster est. at 230lb.

What a beast trying to get that one in the boat!

yep, worth another watch/DVR.

After watching this, I really got the itch to target monster Flatheads, not big….monsters. I have some ideas and it might make for some slow fishing next year, but it might be worth it.

I think I saw the gar on In-Fisherman too? I know I saw that somewhere.

Dtro, wouldn’t it be nice to have 2 lines for that? One with normal bait and the other with a 5# chunk of bait?