CR - 10/8/09 BKK Boon Ma Part II

It was MFF's first time going to Boon Ma, so we brought an assortment of about 20 lures including Duel, Maria, Rapala, Surecatch and Yozuri. We found out that when the fish were hungry, they took almost anything; but at the end of the day, it was still the 'branded' ones that attracted the most bites.

Can you identify the lure in this picture? Clue: It's 'cheap'! ;)

There was once when I was using a 'cheap' lure and could get no fish after 6 casts. The moment I changed to one of the 'Players of the Match', it was fish on! Thus, it would be good to bring a few better quality lures to use during lulls. A very good example was when the workers came in a truck to pour buckets of baby tilapias into the pond at 2:30pm - the 'cheap' lures were no fight for the real thing!

Most of my fish were caught using the red-head!

The reason why that 2 lures (refer to previous post for photo) deserve special mention was that they achieved a laudable performance of at least 50% bite rate. That was how the three of us managed to land a total of more than 30 fish (despite a 1-hour intermission due to extremely strong winds and heavy rain). We lost count very quickly and took only a few photos - the rest of the fish were released immediately after hook removal.

Close-up of the farm worker removing my red-head.

Now, since I've mentioned hook removal, I would like to advise anglers going to Boon Ma to change the treble hooks on their lures to good quality single hooks. When I was tired of using pliers to bend my opened treble hooks back into shape, I decided to change to singles. I was glad I did that - the number of hook-ups remained consistent, without me having to worry about hooks opening!

KBLs will jump and shake their heads to try dislodge the lures.

One other very important point is - do NOT use lures that are too small! As the KBLs feed by sucking/inhaling their food, using too-small lures will mean a very high chance of having a lure stuck deep inside the mouth of the fish. Not only is it more difficult to remove, there's also a higher possibility of the injured fish dying. Using bigger lures would significantly increase the chance of a hook up at the mouth.

Using lures of this size would also attract the attention of more fish.

All in all, we certainly enjoyed catching and fighting the barramundis, which were all around 7kg. The experience of seeing a fish jump up to snap on the poppers/surface cruisers was the icing on the cake!

Curved rods, singing reels and jumping fish - bliss!