Ground baiting — introducing food to the swim before and during the session — is the most consistently misunderstood aspect of Thai pay-lake fishing by visiting anglers. The instinct is to introduce a large volume of attractive material at the start of the session and then wait. This works in some situations but fails in others, and at the highly pressured Bangkok-area pay lakes where giant Siamese carp, Mekong catfish, and various exotic introductions have been caught many thousands of times, the strategy needs to be more nuanced than a simple volume game.
The Theory: Why Ground Baiting Works
Fish feeding on a bed of scattered food particles compete with each other. Competition feeding suppresses caution — a carp that is aware of other carp competing for the same particle bed will often commit to a hookbait more decisively than one that is approaching a single isolated morsel on a clean bottom. Ground baiting creates the stimulus for this competition and maintains it throughout the session.
A secondary mechanism is scent dispersion. Groundbait introduced into a swim creates a plume of attractant that disperses with any current or convection in the lake. This plume recruits fish from a larger area than the hookbait alone could attract. In a large pay lake like Palm Tree Lagoon in Pathum Thani, where the water body is hundreds of metres across and fish distribution is uneven, a well-introduced particle bed can concentrate fish from surrounding areas into a fishable swim within thirty to sixty minutes.
The third mechanism is habituation — fish that have fed repeatedly and safely from a ground-baited area associate that area with food and return to it. This is the basis of pre-baiting strategy.
Pre-Baiting
Evening-Before Pre-Bait
For anglers who can access the venue the evening before their session — many Thai pay lakes are open from early morning to late evening and allow pre-baiting — a light particle introduction at dusk is the most productive approach. Introduce 500 to 800 g of mixed particles: a combination of maggots, soaked pellets, and broken boilies or paste fragments. Throw by hand to a precise location marked by a bank stick or a reference point, so you can present your hookbait accurately over the same area the following morning.
The advantage of an evening pre-bait is that the particles have time to settle and begin fermenting slightly — releasing a persistent scent signal that draws fish to the area through the night. By morning, the swim is established as a food source in the fish's recent memory.
Day-Before Pre-Bait
At venues accessible for two consecutive days, a 24-hour pre-bait produces noticeably better results than an evening-only pre-bait for the top carp species. Introduce a larger volume — 1 to 1.5 kg of particles — the day before, then top up with a light secondary pre-bait the evening before the session. This two-stage approach creates a more established feeding area and recruits fish from a wider radius.
This method is particularly effective at Gillhams Fishing Resort in Krabi, where giant Siamese carp have access to a large, deep lake and can afford to be selective about which swims they visit. A two-day pre-bait builds enough of a food signal to compete with the resort's own daily feeding routine.
Venue Intelligence
At any Thai pay lake you are visiting for the first time, watch where other anglers are catching fish before committing to a swim. Pre-bait the swim adjacent to where fish are showing, not necessarily where other anglers are fishing — competing directly with established anglers in productive positions is rarely successful.
Stim-Baiting During the Session
The principle of stim-baiting — stimulus baiting — is to introduce small, regular quantities of bait during the session rather than one large hit at the beginning. The goal is to keep a group of competing fish in the swim without providing enough food that the competition feeding response dies down.
Frequency and Volume
A practical stim-bait routine for a Thai pay-lake session:
- Every 10 to 15 minutes: Introduce a golf-ball-sized compress of maggots, six to ten small boilies, or a palmful of mixed particles into the swim. This is enough to maintain competition feeding without filling the fish.
- Every 45 to 60 minutes: Introduce a slightly larger pulse — a PVA mesh bag of particles, or a spodded load — to reinvigorate a swim that has gone quiet. Quiet periods at Thai pay lakes often mean fish have consumed the established bed; reinvigorating it with a fresh pulse often produces an immediate response.
Do not introduce a large volume of ground bait the moment you arrive and then do nothing further. This is the most common error — the fish consume the initial pile within thirty minutes and disperse, leaving the hookbait in an unfished swim.
PVA Bag Use
Construction
PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) bags dissolve in water, releasing their particle contents directly at the hookbait. They are the most precise delivery tool for particle ground bait in Thai pay-lake fishing, placing feed exactly at the hookbait position rather than relying on scattering or spodding accuracy.
Fill a PVA mesh bag or PVA solid bag with mixed particles — avoid any wet, oily, or salt-wet ingredients that dissolve the PVA before it reaches the bottom. Dry maggots, dry pellets, broken boilies, and liquidised bread in its dry crumb form are all PVA-safe. Live maggots and wet paste are not — they dissolve the bag during rigging.
Thread the hookbait through the bag's neck before sealing, or attach the sealed bag to the hook shank with PVA tape. Cast with a low-arc trajectory — a high-arc cast increases the time the bag spends in the air and the time it is exposed to surface water on landing, both of which begin dissolving the PVA prematurely.
PVA Bag Strategies by Species
Giant Siamese carp: A PVA bag of mixed pellets and maggots placed directly over the hookbait is the most effective carp ground bait delivery at venues like Bungsamran and Pilot 111. The carp find the pellet pile, begin competing for particles, and the hookbait positioned in the centre of the pile is consumed almost incidentally.
Mekong catfish: Catfish at ground level respond to PVA bags of fishmeal pellets with added fermented shrimp paste (kapi). These species feed primarily by scent rather than visual competition, so the bag's dissolving contents create a scent cloud rather than a particle competition zone.
Pacu and hybrid carp: Sweeter particle mixes work well — crushed fruit boilies, dried corn, and pellets with added strawberry or pineapple essence. Pacu are visually attracted to colour as well as scent; red and orange particles in the PVA bag are worthwhile.
Spod Rod Technique
A spod rod — a heavy, dedicated casting rod used to propel a spod (a torpedo-shaped bait rocket) loaded with particles to the swim at range — is the most efficient way to introduce large volumes of ground bait accurately beyond hand-throwing distance.
Setup
Use a dedicated spod rod rated at 3.5 to 4.5 lb test curve with a large fixed-spool reel carrying 30 to 50 lb mono or braid. Braid is preferred for accuracy — its low stretch transmits the spod's loading and landing more precisely, making consistent delivery to the same spot easier. Tie a simple snap-link swivel at the end of the mainline for quick spod changes.
Technique
Load the spod with the particle mix, clip the snap to the spod's nose ring, and cast in a high arc to the target area. On landing, the spod upends and releases its contents. Retrieve the spod immediately on landing. Mark your line with a marker float or distance clip before the session starts to ensure every subsequent cast lands on the same spot.
At Thai pay lakes where the swim is 30 to 60 metres from the fishing position — typical of the wide-bank lake platforms at Palm Tree Lagoon and IT Lake Monsters — five to eight spod casts of particle mix establish a ground bait area sufficient to attract and hold fish for a two-hour period.
Ground baiting is not an act of charity toward the fish — it is a recruitment tool. You are not feeding the fish; you are convincing the fish to feed in your swim, in your time frame, on your terms.
Chum-Line Theory in Pay Lakes
A chum line — a trail of dissolved attractant created by introducing particles upwind or upcurrent from the hookbait — is a marine fishing technique adapted for stillwater pay lakes with convection currents. In a large Thai pay lake during the heat of the day, thermal convection creates subtle water movement even without wind. By introducing fine particle matter and liquid attractants (liquid fishmeal, diluted molasses, prawn extract) slightly upwind or up-convection from the hookbait, a dispersing attractant trail develops that guides fish to the hookbait position.
This approach is less precise than PVA bag fishing and requires observation of wind direction and any surface movement before application. It is most effective at large, open pay lakes where fish have significant space to move and the initial hookbait presentation may not be close enough to fish-holding areas to attract takes without a recruitment mechanism.
When Ground Baiting is Prohibited or Restricted
Not all Thai venues permit ground baiting. Regional norms differ:
Bangkok and central region: Most large pay lakes permit particle ground baiting with some volume limits. PVA bags are widely accepted. Liquid additives poured directly into the lake are restricted at some venues. Check the rules board displayed at the entrance or reception hut.
Northern venues (Chiang Mai area): Smaller, more boutique fisheries in the north often restrict ground bait introduction to prevent rapid water quality degradation in lakes with limited water turnover. Ask reception explicitly before introducing any particle feed.
Southern resorts (Krabi, Phuket area including Gillhams): Ground baiting is generally permitted but the resort guides often advise on appropriate volumes for the day's conditions. Overloading the swim on a slow day fills the fish and kills the session.
Catch-and-release freshwater venues: Some C&R-focused venues prohibit fishmeal-based ground baits to avoid conditioning fish to human food sources. In these cases, minimal particle use or venue-supplied feed only is appropriate.
Always read the rules on arrival, and when in doubt, ask the reception or the lake guide.
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