2013 September to December Catches

Well, here's a quick update of my catches around local waters. The Southern Islands saw a nice Trevally run, with some trips producing non-stop action. The big Garoupas were in as usual in December, with one of them bagging my boat the Third Position in a Punggol boat fishing competition. Caught a nice Patin at 16.6 kilos in a fishing competition and came in First Position. Some other nice catches. The wind has been rather strong lately... maybe that's why the fish are biting. Let the pics do the talking.

December 2013

Caught a nice fat Tiger Garoupa during the Punggol boat fishing competition.

Hokkien Pro landed a fat Garoupa too. This clinched 3rd Place in the Punggol Competition.

First garoupa caught during the Punggol boat fishing competition almost immediately.

The Southern Islands were not to be outdone. Sagai season brought in nice Trevally and Selar. Ridwan looks victorious.

Brought my nephews out to the south too, during the hols, and they both landed nice fish on their new rods.

2013 November - nice holiday season fishing

This 16 kilo Patin put up a great fight and won me the First Position in a Freshwater fishing competition.

Brought the kids out for some sea air. Here's a small stingray which we released.

The kids love coming on the boat. Here's a small Snapper for ya.

Joey came on board at the Southern boat and we landed some nice fish like parrots and Garoupas.

Garoupas galore during the November period in our Southern waters. So many of them around this time.

In our Southern waters, November's a great time for fishing. Didn't want to go back cos the fish were biting till sunset.

Haha, my first Cambodian fish caught at a fishing pond in Phnom Penh.

October 2013 was also wonderful. Made some new friends and caught some great fish!

Ran into a school of Reddies. Erwin holds one up for the camera.

Albertus caught this for dinner. Yum Yum.

Ubin seems to be full of Kims. Here's another one for dinner.

Typical simple Ubin catch where we were just aiming to hit a few fish for dinner.

The highlight of an October Ubin fishing trip... dinner at Great Atlantis with several of our self-caught fish.

September 2013 had great weather, great friends and great fish too!

Southern Islands in September is Big Parrot season. They seem to be everywhere!!!

Caught this big Pink Tilapia from my own pond, haha. Great harvest time!

Ubin Barramundi are always willing to entertain my friends.

Here's another Ubin Kim for dinner.

You know an Ubin trip would not be complete without dinner at Great Atlantis using some of our catch.

Well that's all for this update. 2014 is here. Wishing everyone a Great New Year! And Gong Xi Fa Cai Nian Nian You Yu!!! 

Finally, an update on fishing around Ubin and the Southern Islands

Somehow, the problem with Facebook hanging on my laptop stopped, and so I can transfer some of my Facebook photos to this blog. Made several trips from June to August, and the catches are still not too sloppy. Let's let the photos speak for themselves.

The latest trip on 31st August produced some reef fish, with Eudon landing the catch of the day... a nice Coral Trout.

After a few years' absence, the Horizontal Angler strikes again.

On 24th August, the usual Ubin trip produced the usual Ubin fish... Garoupas and Kims. Hamzah, Hafeq, Balya and Kings came along.

17 August was fun, with Berkley landing the catch of the day, a nice big Barramundi, on her little pink Ugly Stik.

17 August. Dexter landed his own Barra and Sindy caught a tasty Flathead which we used for BBQ that night.

17 August. We had a yummy BBQ dinner that night, featuring succulent Barramundi and Flathead.

10 August was another great day, with plenty of reef fish, and Erwyn landing the catch of the day, a big Coral Trout which we had for dinner that night.

10 August Catch. Erwyn couldn't wait to taste the fish.

Erwyn's Abu rod shows that it can really take the pressure, but I think his fish swam into a snag.

3 August was the day I landed this 3kg Parrotfish, which was cooked in 3 ways. Head was braised, one side was Hong Kong steamed, and the other side was used to make soup, all at Great Atlantis.

June and July 2013 produced good fish, with Bryan landing this beautiful Tiger-Giant Garoupa Crossbreed on metal jig.

Kings landed this nice Coral Trout and Erwyn fell in love with it immediately. Fortunately, he managed to land one of his own a few trips later.

Back for Summer Vacation, someone decided to go for a swim.

Quite a number of nice Barramundi showing up in Ubin during the June to July period.

Alan, Dexter and Erwyn enjoying the catch of the day in a Macho manner.

OK, looks like this update is over, and the fish are still biting. As long as Facebook doesn't cause my laptop to hang, I should be able to update this blog regularly.

Garoupas Galore on Star Wars Day

Coincidentally, Star Wars Day fell on a Saturday. And to all Star Wars fans out there...

'May the Fourth be with you!!!'

OK, with that out of the way, it's time for another brief fishing update on my regular Saturday trip. Kings and Bryan came along for some hardcore fishing action, and got more than what we bargained for. First, we headed to the Semakau Jigging Zone and landed some nice fish on Rubberband Jig as well as Metal Jigs. Bryan opened the day with a beautiful Coral Trout and he was contented for the rest of the trip.

Great start to the day!

Kings and I had some catching up to do, but we all got bullied by the fish, probably a school of Tengirri swam by as all our jigs got bitten off. Finally, we landed some decent Trevally around a 10m deep reef.

This Sagai greedily swallowed the whole Rubberband Jig

Then Kings got in on the action and started landing more fish, and decided to use some of our catch as bait, including a live Sagai and some Big Eyes. He landed a nice big Garoupa on live bait.

Goldspot Trevally at the shallow reef are always welcome

Kings, who is always going for something big, lands a 6 kilo Garoupa

Seeing Kings land his Garoupa, I used a Chocolate Hind as bait accidentally and landed a table sized Garoupa, literally. It was about the size of a coffee table!!!

Rubberband Jig Strikes AGAIN!!

I was jigging with my rubberband jig when a small Chocolate Hind probably took the bait. While bringing it in, the fish suddenly got bigger, much bigger, and a big Garoupa was landed. The little Chocolate Hind was still hanging on the little hook, with its scales all roughed up when the bigger Garoupa came to eat it.

Ended the day with this nice table sized Garoupa for Lynn (a friend who placed an order for a live garoupa)

Looks like the bad weather lately has brought the bigger fish in. Hoping for another bonanza next Saturday!

Fishing and Dining on our fish... yum yum.

The 20th and 27th of April were also fishing days and I had good trips at the Southern Islands and Ubin respectively.

On the 20th, Kings and I headed south for a short trip, landed some nice fish and dinner, and called it a day.

The Rubberband Jig strikes again. Now Kings is a believer in the power of rubberbands.

It was Pat's birthday and all the kids were amazed at the Teochew Steamed Parrot that Kings contributed

On the 27th, Albertus, Branson (name changed for this trip) and I went chilling out at Ubin again and we had a great time catching nice Golden Snappers and Garoupas, and some Barramundi as usual. Too bad we did not bother much with the camera until dinner was served, haha. Bernard the Prawn guy at Punggol introduced us to Horkomo Restaurant just next to Great Atlantis, which offered us a good deal to cook some of our live Garoupas. It did not hurt that Bernard gave us some stewed beef and beef tendon to sweeten the deal, so we decided to give Great Atlantis a miss just this time.

These are perfectly steamed Garoupas. Another great end to a  wonderful day!

Time for some relaxing Ubin fishing

Woohoo, another Saturday has come, and this time, David, Chng and Hokkien Pro (he speaks Hokkien like a professional) decided that Ubin was the place to be, as we simply wanted to chill out with some beers, David's amazing Curry Chicken with French Loaf, and dinner at Great Atlantis with the Catch of the Day.

Here we are launching my good old Ubin boat at Punggol Marina.

Our aims were simple, and we headed to our first spot, hoping for a Barramundi to cook for dinner. Meanwhile, I had my Carrot Cake breakfast and we settled down to sing some songs and tell stories of past adventures.

We moved around Ubin for a while, looking for a nice place to enjoy David's special Chicken Curry which he had specially prepared the night before, and found a very calm spot to enjoy our food and drinks. Oh, by the way, we landed some small Threadfin Salmon before lunch.

'He mai chiak, nang chiak!' was our refrain as we thoroughly enjoyed the picnic at sea. At some point in time, we started singing 'Ni Ze Me She De Wo Nan Guo' by Huang Pin You, and we sang it with feeling, truly. There's nothing like floating in a boat off Ubin's calm waters, enjoying some nice food, accompanied by Tigers, and singing some oldies.

Suddenly, Chng was on to a decent fish and we all cheered when dinner came into the landing net. It was a pretty decent Barramundi, or Kim Buk Lor.

Chng and David know that dinner has been settled.

Then we all started catching more Barramundis and a few more Threadfin when the current picked up. The action was rather good, but I lost two good Threadfin at boatside and one more huge fish which managed to cause me a friction burn when I held the line.

Even a simple picnic trip at Ubin produces decent quality fish.

Anyway, when we got hungry, we headed back to the marina for our highly anticipated La La Beehoon and Hong Kong Steamed Barramundi. With wild caught fish for dinner, who could ask for more?

Great Atlantis does a wonderful Hong Kong Steamed Live Wild Caught Barramundi.

Simple southern fishing trip with Fau, Ismail, Bryan and some terrible weather.

It was another Saturday, and as everyone knows, Saturday is fishing day!

This time, Fau, Ismail, Bryan and a terrible thunderstorm came along to make it a wet and wild trip. In the end, the fish still cooperated. When we arrived at RSYC at 9am, it was threatening to rain, but we still launched the boat and started moving out of the marina. About 500m out, we saw a huge black cloud sweeping in from the west and the wind started picking up, so I turned the boat around and headed back to the marina for some shelter. What a good idea it was! I even managed to take a short nap.

Taking a short nap at the marina while a huge storm swept by out at sea.

After waiting for about 2 hours, the weather looked clear enough for a second attempt and we managed to head to some sheltered water around Pulau Hantu before another huge cloud appeared from the West. This time, we couldn't avoid the heavy downpour. Out came the raincoats and we braved the storm while the rain started coming in horizontal sheets and lightning flashed all around us. Everything turned white around the boat and visibility was down to only a few meters at some points. Scarily, this lasted for a pretty long time.

After a few hours, the sky started clearing and we dared to begin fishing again. It was already rather late in the day by then, and out came the jigs. Almost immediately, in 7 meters of water, I lost a monster which I could not even stop on 40 pound line. It could have been a monster garoupa, but I felt like I had hooked onto the MRT or something like that. Anyway, not to be disheartened, we continued fishing and were finally rewarded with some nice fish in shallow water around Pulau Hantu.

Bryan opened accounts with a nice Javelin on jig

Even Fau and Ismail got in on the action with some nice reef fish like parrots and Spanish flag snappers.
Then I got busy as a school of Trevally came by.

Big Longfin Trevally always make my day. We landed s number of these.

Caught several trevally and we even had a few double hookups. Then some GT came to give us some sporting action (we released all the GTs) and we decided to call it a day after the arms started to ache from fighting all these strong fish. Even Ismail had a chance to fight one of the Trevallies I had hooked up.

Double Hookup of Sagai and GT. Kept the Sagai, released the GT.

Bad weather almost ruined our day, but the fish and the company definitely made my Saturday complete, as usual.

Special Rubberband technique discovered for a great catch

It was simply amazing. After staring at my madai jigs at home one day, I came up with an idea to use rubberbands on my Hongkong hooks. It was a cheap and simple way to make a madai jig, and everyone on board was pleasantly surprised by the results. It all started with this fish, and Nadine was quick to get a video of the first fish before all the fish started coming in and we had no more time to shoot videos.



 The first fish landed on Rubberband jig was caught on film.

Here's a closer look at the special lure.

The first of many Parrots to fall prey to the rubberband lure.

That something so simple could be so effective was really beyond belief. Soon, every alternate cast was resulting in a hookup, and we only had a short while to fish, because there was a birthday party to attend in the evening. Nevertheless, we had fun, especially when the bigger parrots showed up. Nadine and I landed about 5 big parrots and a few smaller ones, with some assorted fish like Garoupas and Fusiliers thrown into the mix.

The Parrots were really strong, and some bigger ones escaped.

Parrot after parrot came, what a day!!!

A clearer look at the Rubberband lure.

Even this Yellowtail Fusilier was attracted to the flowery Rubberbands.

Big Garoupas find the Rubberband lure irresistable.

Small Garoupas also get excited with rubber.

Who needs bait when you have rubberbands lying around??

The big blue ice box has some nice surprises for dinner.

Bryan added this Garoupa to the mix. It was funny because he hooked it on its ass and thought it was a  monster fish... Happy April Fools' Day!!

Here's one of the Parrots simply steamed Hongkong Style with fried ginger and Kikkoman.