QUICK FACTS


 

20 Minutes from Chiang Mai City

  

  

20 Minutes from Chiang Mai Airport

  

  

No Day Ticket Anglers

  

  

Biggest Amazon Reditails in Thailand

 

 

5 IGFA World Records

 

 

Luxurious Accommodation

 

 

4 Angler's Maximum

 

 

Great base for Northern Thailand Fishing Tour

 

 

All-Inclusive Packages

ABOUT US:


 

INTRODUCTION:


 

Dear Angler,

   Thank you for your interest in Teak Tree Lake, our own private fishery. I hope you enjoy our website, and that someday soon we can tempt you to a few days fishing with us here at Teak Tree.

 

I've been a keen angler for well over 45 years, and enjoyed some exposure in the UK angling press in the 90's for chasing Wel's Catfish around Kazakhstan (literally!), as well as landing some pretty decent Nile Perch out of Lake Nasser and Sturgeon in Canada, those were the days!

 

My dream has always been to have my own fishery, but after managing a fishery and fish farm in Northumberland for 11 years and seeing the finances involved, I knew a fishery in the UK for me at least would be financially impossible. However my life was to change forever when I was introduced to the Thai fishing scene in 2001 and was exposed to the immense power of the Mekong Catfish at Bungsamran. I was immediately mesmorized by the abundance and diversity of big fish, and I knew almost from my first day's fishing in Thailand that I had found my dream destination for my lifelong ambition to develop and own my own lake at "the bottom of the garden", a dream I am sure I am not alone in amongst angler's the world over.

 

After some agonising I made a decision to sell up and sever my ties in England and buy some land in Thailand to create my "ideal" fishery. It was a purely selfish decision with no commercial consideration in mind. The intention was to keep my fishery purely for my own pleasures, only allowing close friends to enjoy the lake with me once in a while. However 100's of outsized hungry fish have put paid to that idea in the end....you would be amazed what these guys can chomp through in one sitting!

 

I have watched as Amazon Red-tails swallow a whole loaf of bread (I thought they were supposed to eat fish!} and Chao Phraya Catfish speed across the lake with their padded mouth wide open trying to engulf anything unfortunate enough to cross their paths, cats, dogs, buffalo's you name it they'll try to swallow it whole! I've witnessed Indian Carp grow from !oz to 37lb in less than 3 and a half years! And Arapaima 12 inches long grow to 150lb in even less time. So in the end I have bee forced to allow anglers to come and help me pay for feeding my hungry pets, before they eat me out of house and home! It was then under my guidance my wife Noon decided to open the lake to a very limited number of anglers purely to feed and maintain the growing population of large fish in the lake.

 

HISTORY:


 

Before developing Teak Tree, I had spent many years traveling the globe in the quest for big fish, but here in Thailand it is possible to buy many different species of fish from all over the world, many of which grow to enormous sizes, so you can in fact have the absoulute pick of the fish you want swimming around in your lake, no matter how large they grow, thus reducing travel time! (That's a joke). A lot of tropical freshwater fish grow to enormous sizes and given the temperatures and climate they can reach theit potential very quickly, the waters are rich in food from algae, plankton, shimp and freshwater crab and other crustaceans as well as an abundance of fish fry, so really a tropical lake is more like a sort of fish soup, feeding on itself, sort of like a living clam chowder.

 

In February 2006 an existing lake on a piece of land advertised by a Bangkok Bank roused my curiosity, and after taking a long look at the land, and researching the area, wheels were set in motion to buy. When the deal was completed the land office finally came to mark the boundaries. It was at this point we found the land on the south shore of the lake did not belong to us! After the initial shock we has to track down the land owner and make an offer without seeming to keen. As luck would have it he was happy to sell at a reasonable price to our great relief, it was now possible to put a wall right round our property (as opposed to it cutting the lake in two!). At this point we were also approached by the owners of some land at the eastern end of the lake to buy a strip from them, which turned out to be a very useful area for building some stock ponds and eventually it became the ideal spot to build our own house.

 

The existing lake had stood for 15 years being created by the landowner stripping and selling the soil, quite a common practice out here, he managed to get to a depth of 3 meters ok but when he went further the ground water up welled creating the lake. The abandoned lake then fell victim to the usual fly tipping antics on it's roadside edge with people using it as  convenient place to discard their rubbish, so a huge clean up job was necessary, although water quality was fortunately good due to regular inflows from the canals . Over the years water had flooded into the lake from a series of irrigation canals bringing many native Thai fish species direct from the Ping river. Much work had to be done before stocking could take place in any numbers, but of course I could not help my self, whenever passing an aquarium shop something had to come back to the lake, being an avid pike angler in the UK Alligator Gar were my first fish stocked as they resemble pike but can grow to a huge size in there native Texas and Rio Grande reaching over 12ft.

A lot of rubbish had been dumped in the lake over the years this had to be cleared by yours truly. Hardcore and rubble had to be compacted next to the road before wall building could commence, all 800 meters of it! After all I wanted it to be very private. Construction on the two bungalows and the lake widening where started simultaneously to speed up the development, the whole area looked like ground zero after scrub had been cleared and the lake widened, but once building commenced things started to take shape fairly quickly.

 

The first real stocking was towards the end of the first year when thousands of fry from different Thai species where introduced, including, Rohu, Mrigral, Common carp, Silver carp, Giant Siamese Carp, Black Minnow Shark and of course Tilapia as food stuff for the predators. They were followed by a batch of Sorubim, Amazon Red-tails, and Shovel Nosed Tiger catfish up to 1 meter long. Some larger Siamese carp were then sourced up to 20kg and introduced the following year along with some Arapaima, there has been an on going stocking program ever since, with ever more exotic species including Dorado, Peacock Bass, Goonch, and countless others.

 

Our original stock of Siamese carp are now in excess of 50lb, we have home grown Indian carp to over 37lb, Tambaqui 30lb, Ripsaw catfish 30lb,Amazon Red-tails approaching 100lb, Sorubim to 50lb+ Arapaima to over 200lb, Teak Tree Lake is also the home to 5 IGFA world records for some of the smaller Thai fish species. At last count there was some 38 fish species in the lake.

 

As you can probably see I am trying to create a mixed fishery with many different species with a balance between predators and prey. The fishing is not always easy but the rewards can be worth waiting for, but if you want to enjoy your fishing in privacy with luxurious accommodation in tranquil settings with the chance to catch some very large exotic fish of many different species, while being guided and fed some delicious Thai cuisine, only twenty minutes from Chiang Mai airport. Head for Teak Tree Lake and be sure you will be looked after very well.

 

Contact us to book a stay at Thailand's most exclusive fishery.

You can Email us, or give us a call on +66861926026, and we will check availability for your chosen dates