Borneo attack fish

In the foothills of Mt. Kinabalu you must be weary when crossing streams and rivers by foot. Something lurks beneath the surface...

A fisherman's life

All Thai boats have a very distinctive shape with an aggressively arched concave hull and a bow rising steeply from the water. They always sport a fresh coat of paint in now less than 4 or 5 different shades of bright colors. From what I can tell they use some type of drag net or circle net to catch their haul. These commercial ships light up the gulf horizon at as the sun sets as they keep on working into the night. But fishing is an everyman's sport and on the beach in the evening you can find the young kids casting a rod off the rocks or the taxi boat drivers using a trident to gig all sorts of fish under the beam of a spotlight along the reefs. On Haad Tien even big mamma from Family Bungalow would have her son drop her out on the rocks just on the outer rim of the cove with a bag and a small pick axe. She would return a few hours later with hundreds of tiny clams not more than a centimeter in length meticulously picked off the tidal rock walls. When one of the locals on Haad Tien had caught a tuna everyone was alerted as the lucky fisherman would arrive at shore grinning as his mates would cheer him on. Those nights would offer the opportunity for some good grilled steaks on par with anything available back in the big cities... only these were caught and cooked with love and a lil bit o Thai spice.

The official Bangkok welcome catfish

Rolling into our pad for the next two days in Bangkok we see we have a beautiful view of a nice little canal and a temple just beyond.  My eye becomes immediately fixed upon what appear to be some strange creatures stirring below the surface of that questionably tainted water.  I run down the stairs and find a thrashing cauldron of catfish 25lb+.  Catfish in these densities and of this size immediately trigger for an angler such as myself the question... 'to noodle' or 'not to noodle'. Ohhhh boy, this is a rare and great opportunity for an adventurous angler unexperienced with the ways of the deep south US and their catfish heritage.  Perhaps if I had knocked down a few Singhas earlier I may have been sufficiently lubricated to try and tackle such a mission.  Fortunately the fear of one of these monsters getting the better of me and dragging me into his turf to get throttled amongst the mass of writhing fish deterred me... just for now.  But the fish must sleep too...