Careful!!! It's a Stingray, Daniel exclaimed...
We were anchored off Changi at about 1 am in the morning when the fish started biting. I'd just had a brief struggle with a huge eel-tailed Cattie and was trying to unhook it safely when Daniel said he was stuck on something.
I didn't pay him much attention as I was very much focused on risky task of unhooking the frisky 2 kilo plus Catfish. (One such fish had sent me painfully to the hospital sometime in 1998 where, out of complacency, I'd let a big wave swing the fish towards me and onto my knee... sigh... what a painful lesson.)
Anyway, after a couple of minutes, I had just unhooked the Catfish when Daniel exclaimed about catching a Stingray and quickly let whatever he had brought up fall back into the water. "Stingray?" I wondered as I peered over the edge of the boat to try to catch a glimpse of the creature Daniel had caught and ALMOST released. Nothing. So I pulled in his line slowly using my hand till I saw a long whip-like thingy slowly emerge from the water. Then I realized there were two whip-like thingies and heard a snapping sound as the creature curled and uncurled its body in a frantic struggle to free itself. The silhouette of the creature as well as the sound seemed vaguely familiar and it suddenly dawned upon me... "LOBSTER!!!!!!! QUICK, PULL IT IN!!!"
So that was how Daniel caught the lobster. For those of you who want to know what his lobster formula was, it was a whole Australian Pilchard double hooked on Big-mouth hooks.
Some people say that it was probably an escapee while others say that they used to catch them there. Personally, that was the third time I'd seen someone pull up a lobster in the wild on a hook in all my years of fishing, so lobsters can indeed be found in the wild. Whatever it was, escapee or wild-child, it tasted GREAT... right, Daniel?
From left to right: A true brawler... the wild Mangrove Jack, caught just after sunset with my Godson Reuben; Felip with a similar MJ caught earlier that day; A box of Snapper, Red Emperor, Garoupa and Sweetlip... all in a day's work; Garoupa galore (we released the small buggers, these are the table-sized ones) with a few Snapper, a Batfish, a Stinger, and even a Jewfish.
Fishing Ponds Have Done a Great Injustice to the Awesome Mangrove Jack...
Then one day I had the opportunity to tangle with a wild MJ (during those times, Pasir Ris "Fishing Pond" was still a swampy ox-bow lake with children playing with toy boats along its banks). I'll never forget that fight.
I was using 6 lb line on a Daiwa reel with a Nilsmaster lure and reeling in slowly when something almost wrenched my rod out of my hand. The shock of the strike left me stunned for a moment as the Daiwa's drag screamed and howled while my rod was bent into a complete U-shape.
The fish never really gave me a chance to calm my shaking legs as it created havoc all over the place, even at times swimming towards me and then suddenly bursting off in a different direction at speeds that would put the Barra to shame. I tried really hard to get a glimpse of the fish but all I saw were huge boils, explosions and swirls in the water.
After participating in about 5-10 minutes of tug-of-war, with the fish still keeping out of sight, I decided that this fish was gonna be a whopper. 3 kg? 5 kg even?
But then, just when I thought that my fish was gonna break all previous weight records, it literally "popped" out of the water and landed at my feet. I felt really humiliated yet amused at the size of the fish, it was a Mangrove Jack barely hitting the One kilo mark. From then on, my respect for the MJ grew tremendously and I remember a couple of heart-stopping fights similar to that first one.
Then one day, Pasir Ris Fishing Pond was born and many other commercial ponds sprouted up all over Singapore. These ponds started stocking mostly Barras at first but suddenly the MJs started turning up in epidemic proportions. What made things worse was that most of these MJs were bred in brackish water ponds in our neighbouring countries and did not have the same amount of exercise and muscles as the wild ones. So, many of the new anglers in Singapore who appeared along with the fishing pond trend started catching these weakened, captivity-bred MJs and they probably started wondering what the hell these black coloured fish were.
And, of course, along came the "pond pro" who, after catching hundreds of such undernourished MJs, would 'educate' everyone else by telling them that these were Michael Jacksons or Chia Chors which tasted far inferior to the nicer-looking Kim Buk Lor or Barra. This was not hard to believe, if you'd seen a pond-reared MJ before. Thus, the MJ started earning a bad reputation at commercial ponds and people even started swearing when they caught one of these poor MJs. Deprived of any real experience with a wild MJ, the masses started looking down on the MJ. They don't know what they're missing.
So, before you jump to any conclusions about a fish, whether about its fighting qualities or about its taste, know that the wild MJ, in terms of strength, speed and taste, has very few peers. Also ask yourself, the next time you catch one in a pond, whether you see the fish you catch through the eyes of someone else who doesn't know as much as he thinks he does, or through your own eyes.
Whatever it is, to me, the Mangrove Jack will always be a SUPERB fish.
