Northern Pike - Roberto Ferrario - Adventures/ENGLISH 23.

THE SNAKEHEAD FISH
Roberto Ferrario

One of the most exotic, strange and aggressive freshwater fish in the world.

When some years ago I discovered the snakead fish on a Singaporean fishing magazine I was immediately surprised and fascinated about this fish. I thought that, as soon as I should have discovered a good place in Asia, I should try to organize a fishing trip with the goal of catching it. So when last year (2003) I found on the Web that there was the real possibility to make a serious trip to a remote area of the Thailand, I didn’t lose the time and I started planning my trip there.

WHO IS IT?

The giant snakehead is the largest representative of the widespread snakehead genus Channa (formerly Ophicephalus). This extremely popular sport and food fish is avidly pursued in several Asian country by local fishermen. There are many tales of giant snakehead growing to absurd sizes and attacking and eating humans, but there is no scientific evidence of any such monsters and such tales should be treated as mythology.

This fish have been recorded at over 35 kg, although fish over 9 kg are fairly rare. It grows from fingerlings to about 2 kg in one year. The young fish have attractive reddish-brown backs and prominent longitudinal stripes, which gradually fade as they grow older. The adult fish are counter-shaded with silver bellies and dark backs which often have a greenish, purplish or brownish cast. Color variations in adult snakehead depend on the color of water they inhabit. In alkaline water, they become very pale but in acidic water, they can become very brightly colored indeed with vibrant purples and bottle-green flashes along their backs. They often live from 10 to 15 years.

Large snakehead are solitary fish which inhabit snags and heavily weeded areas. Submerged trees make an ideal home for an adult fish. They will remain under cover for most of the day, emerging only to feed and rarely swimming in mid water.

Like all snakeheads, they are high predatory; small prey such as baitfish and frogs are taken in one gulp, but with their sharp teeth and powerful jaws, the big snakeheads are capable of immobilizing large prey such as small carp. Prey is often bitten in half on the strike. They rarely chase down their prey but prefer to attack from ambush with great accuracy and acceleration. This species is cannibalistic- small snakehead often become prey for larger specimens- rather a paradox when one considers the care with which the parents guard their young.

Live baiting is productive, with frogs being a particularly attractive bait. This enables them to survive in dirty and polluted water with a low oxygen content. Snakehead will regularly rise in the cleanest of water, producing a distinctive ripple on the surface. They can then be cast to with lures, much like trout. Surface lures (propeller-type lures are great) attract exciting splashy strikes. This fish have been taken on wet-fly. Fly fishermen seldom target snakehead simply because strikes will almost certainly end in a bite-off. They are good, strong fighters, pulling hard and resisting vigorously when hooked. They are dirty fighters and will make for the nearest underwater snag when hooked.

TH ADVENTURE

After an intercontinental flight of 12 hours, taxi rides, days in hotels all was ready to start the adventure. In 5 hours of minubus from the capital Bangkok, with my friend Jean Francois Helias, we reached the Khao Leam reservoir near the Burma border. Here in a huge valley covered by a tropical forest there is an 80 kilometers long artificial lake that was created by damming part of the valley where 3 rivers flow in.

In this lake there are thousand of coves and channel like a labyrinth that create a perfect habitat for hundreds of different species; one of which is the snakehead.

This region is totally wild and there isn’t any tourist, hotels or lodges, but only local small fishermen villages. In fact we stayed on some big floating wooden houses very rustic run by local people

The boats where quite new, 6 meters fiberglass in length powered by 85 HP Yamaha outboards and the guides where very competent and knew where to fish. The lake is very huge, but all the fishing spots weren’t too far, maximum 20 minute.

Mosquitoes weren’t a problem and the weather was sunny, about 28 °C, mixed at some hours of rain every day.

FISHING TECNHIQUES

The snakehead is a fish that love living on the bottom, but it is irremediably attracted from vibration and sounds coming from the surface; so every imitation of fish, frog, mouse that swims on the surface and produces noise will be the perfect lure for this predator fish. In fact the best lures are always surface poppers.

There are two different kind of fishing techniques for this fish; the first is the classic spin fishing techniques, that is casting the lure in zones where we think the fish could be waiting for a prey, like we do for pikes in our waters: submerged trees, weed beds, small channels and so on.

The second technique is, for me, more exciting because is like hunting the fish. But before explaining how it works you must know that the snakehead, after spawning, it stays in the zone to patrol the eggs and it also do the same after that the small fishes are born. It usually stays with them for some weeks.

They exhibit great determination and aggression in defending their young. There have been reports of people being severely bitten by parent snakehead. The young fish continue to remain in a tight school for about six months before separating and becoming totally self-sufficient and eventually extremely territorial.

The color of these small fishes is at the beginning black, but in few days it comes fire-red. These small snakehead stay on the surface in a compact school, and so could be found easily. Under this school there is always the female, but sometimes also the male of the snakhead. The female is more aggressive.

So, the technique consists of navigating at slow speed until we find the colored school and then approach them with the help of an electric engine, so as not to scare them otherwise they will go down by hearing the noise.

At this point, you can start casting over the school; we have used with great success Rapala Skitter Pop and Ragot Big Bass in high visible colors and red head color.

We can have two kinds of reaction of the fish: an immediate attack of our lure or a totally indifference to it. In the second case we must start to cast and retrieve very quickly so to try to get nervous the snakehead. Sometimes it is necessary to cast for 20 or more minutes before the now exhausted fish decides to attack our noisy popper.

Sometimes it misses the lure or jumps behind not eating it. One day a big female attacked my lure for 13 times before I was able to hook it up.

The nice thing of the surface lure fishing for this fish is that the bitings are always spectacular with jumps of the fish under the lure. It is really enrapturing to see the fish frenetically run after the lure and then make it disappear in a sprinkling of water; few seconds and your reel starts to give line in an impressive way.

This fish has a very hard mouth, so it is necessary very powerfully strikes to penetrate the treble hooks. Most of the fishes in fact are lost because the hook up isn’t to deep and after few seconds of fishing the fish is free again. In some cases it is better to replace the treble hooks with more resistant ones; the ones used for salt water are the best choice. Personally, I used with success VMC 8626 and 9622.

When snakehead fishing, one thing is certain: the bigger the school of small fishes, the bigger will be the size of the snakehead under them.

Powerful spinning rod is a must for this fish, sometimes the hook-ups are so strong that the rod can broken in two or more pieces - this happened to our Thai guide Son Hop ,when a 6-7 kilo fish decided to eat his lure.

I used a Shimano "Technium" rod 20-60 gram linked with a powerfull reel with 100 meters of 40 lb Dyneema line. The line must be very resistant because the first thing that the snakehead does when it is hooked up is to move immediately to the bottom and find a tree or a stone in order to find some shelter. So, it is necessary to stop immediately its powerful run.

During my experience on Kaho Leam lake, the water conditions weren’t too good, with high water. So we fished mainly on sight fishing technique. Anyway, we have had very good action with several bites in all fishing sessions; big snakehead had ate our lure several times but, for one reason or another, we lost the biggest ones. The maximum weight of the snakehead we caught was around 5-6 kilos.

This fishing trip was surely more than positive - I fished in some places where the fish ha never seen ever seen a single lure. The lake is completely wild with a great amount of all kinds of fish. I will be back there for sure.

For more information you can contact Fishing Adventure Thailand of Jean-Francois Helias (34/13-14 City Studio, 8/21 Sukhumvit Soi 13, Bangkok 10110, Thailand) or visit his web site www.anglingthailand.com or contact him by e-mail info@fishingasia.com or fax (0066 662 651239)