Bert and the Bees

Albertus brought his colleagues and friends along for what was supposed to be a simple day out hunting for a nice catch for dinner, but some bees decided to re-write the script. Here's what happened.

After getting food and drinks from the Punggol Sheng Siong, we trooped down to the marina. There were two Andres, Merwyn, Bert, Rachel and me. Seeing that the boat was already in the water, we proceeded to load up the stuff, and that was when I noticed one or two bees buzzing around me and I saw one landing on the seat and crawling underneath it. I found it very strange, so I lifted the seat cushion up and got the shock of my life! There was a bees' hive on my boat, just under my seat, and there must have been thousands of bees!

BZZZZZZZZ!!!!

The aftermath of the fogging and spraying down with water - a pile of bees.

Sounding the alert, I told everyone to quickly head back to the shelter while I tried to solve the problem. It took some time before the proper equipment came along, but with the help of Ong and a fogging machine, the boat was brought back onto land, fogged and sprayed down with water. It actually took about three hours before the boat was cleared of bees.

The patient anglers waiting on shore were still glad to be able to go fishing, though it was already lunch time. While clearing the honeycomb from under my seat, I got stung by two remaining guards, but fortunately, they were just honeybees. With only half a day left, I was just hoping to get a decent fish to cook for dinner at Great Atlantis.

Fortunately, the fish were in a cooperative mood and Rachel was the first to land a nice Golden Snapper. Even before we managed to settle down after taking some pictures, Andre landed a Barramundi. Dinner was settled.

A Tiger Garoupa like this always makes a nice dinner dish. Yum!

In fact, the fish kept on coming and we landed another bigger Golden Snapper, a few more Barramundi and I landed a nice fat Tiger Garoupa. I think we had more than enough for dinner, yeah!

Two of the Golden Snappers went for Teochew Steamed while a Barramundi was Hong Kong Steamed. Good food and new friends always go well together!

Though we only had a half day to fish after the misadventure with the bees, we had a nice catch and I had made some new friends. The dinner at Great Atlantis, as expected, was wonderful!

Back at Ubin for some Barramundi action

After some hectic fishing at the Southern Islands last week, I sorta missed my Ubin Barramundis. So I rounded up the posse which included Bryan, Nadine (it was her birthday trip - Happy Birthday), Fau and Ismail.

The Birthday Girl caught a nice Golden Snapper. That's your gift from the sea!

Of course, to catch Barramundi, I had to go to Good Feeling. But even before reaching the spot, we landed some good stuff during the pit stops when we saw some birds diving down for baitfish. Always a good sign, Fau was the first to open accounts with a beautiful Red Snapper. Then Bryan added a surprise catch with a Mackerel on metal jig. That's rather rare in Ubin waters.

Bryan must be wondering why he wasted time jigging in Rompin the previous week when you can get them locally.

Anyway, we finally reached Good Feeling and the Barramundi were all around. After catching four of them, plus a few Snappers, I decided to move to another spot. Anyway, we had more than enough fish to eat already. So I headed to the undersea cliff where Bryan managed to Madai up a fat garoupa. When the bait was finished after a few more fish, we headed back to the boatel, happy with our catch. I love these relaxing boat trips with friends.

Ubin always obliges us with these goodies, and an Orange Haired Tigerfish was thrown in as a bonus.

The humble Madai produces the goods

Went for a half day Madai trip with Balya to the Southern Islands simply with the intention to catch a few Spanish Flag Snappers, but it turned out we caught more than we bargained for, in a good way.

Here's my all-time favourite fish, the Golden Snapper, landed on a $6 old bashed up Asari Madai Jig that I've been using for several trips already.

On the way out from the Marina, the weather didn't look too good, so I started heading towards sheltered waters when along the way I had a hunch there were fish below us (we were passing an old Spanish Flag Snapper spot). I stopped the engine and we let down our lines. True enough, there was a nice Golden Snapper waiting for me which initially grabbed my Madai, fought for a second or two, dropped, and came back to attack the same lure. What an aggressive fish!

Having caught some other nice fish like small Spanish Flag Snappers, we decided to move on to calmer waters for lunch, and fortunately, the weather cleared.

Here's Balya with our simple half-day trip catch. Sweetlips, Garoupas and Snappers.

After catching a few small fish, we decided to head towards the Garoupa Zone to land some big garoupas. We landed two decent garoupas in quick succession but the biggies were not around, it seemed.

The ever reliable Asari Madai produces yet another table fish.

As luck would have it, after landing so many assorted fish, including a large Sweetlip, on the Madai, I noticed that my 100lb kevlar leader for the assist hook was rather frayed. Thinking we were about to head back anyway, I let my line back down for one last try, and that was when the big one decided to bite. Sigh... you can guess what happened.

The fish pulled, I pulled back, it dragged out my 40lb line, I thumbed the spool to stop the massive fish from reaching the rocks, and the fish slowly but surely turned. I even managed to reel about 5 metres of line in, with a massive tugging weight on the other end. Thinking I was in the clear, I began my simple pumping motion, and that was when the fish took off on a slow but powerful run, and my kevlar leader's last surviving fibre decided to call it a day.

The moment I felt the fish escape, I knew what had gone wrong. I was staring at that frayed leader just a moment before... well, looks like another hard lesson learnt! And the big one got away!

Well, going back to the boatel with a large Golden Snapper and some other good stuff isn't that bad anyway, but why are there tears in my eyes? Sob Sob... haha.

Jigging trip with Bryan and Kings

Catch of the day - a beautiful Coral Trout

The weather was not good in the morning, so we waited on shore for a while, and finally headed out in the afternoon. Still not keen to use bait, we decided to use metal jigs this time. Armed with our $4 cast fighters, we hit the spot with anticipation.

It didn't take long before we started landing reef fish like big Parrots and Spanish Flag Snappers before a nice Coral Trout appeared. That made my day.

Then Bryan and Kings got in on the action with a school of Giant Trevally below the boat. All GTs and Queens were released to fight another day. Hassan managed to get Hazlan to join us for a while, but all was fine and in the evening when the current slowed down, we cruised back to the boatyard with aching arms and a pretty decent overall catch.

Light game action on metal jigs - our local GTs sure give a good fight!

Fun with Lures

Getting a little bored with the usual bait fishing, over the last few weeks I decided to switch back to using artificial baits just for the challenge.

First, I took out my trusty Rapala CD-14 from the old Pulau Aur days and started trolling around the Southern Islands with Kings. Was fun just imagining something like a Mackerel or Barracuda striking our lures but it was relatively quiet most of the day. Finally, just as we were about to give up, I had a strike! ON!

It didn't take me long to bring in the catch of the day, a beautiful Garoupa which was promptly steamed and eaten fresh that very night. The trip may not have produced many fish, but it sure was good for a laugh!

The only catch of the day, but getting it on lure made it doubly fun!