Jan to Mar 2007 Fishing ... Big Wild Barras... have you ever tangled with one of these?
after a recent oceanic virus outbreak wiped out Snapper stocks all around Ubin, causing almost total wipeouts at fish farms along the South Ubin Farm Line. Well, that was during the February period, and the action seems to be picking up.
Here's a tasty Tiger Tooth Croaker I landed compared to a standard Gelama (Bearded Croaker)
The April catch got even better though, but before I update those reports, here's a few interesting pics during the March fishing adventures.
Karen shows that the Snappers are coming back, with this healthy gleaming Onga
Went for a few short trips in March, landed Snappers and Grunters, but the interesting one must be Mike's strange Snapper (below).
What's this fish? Looks like a Timun (Spanish Flag Snapper) but the pattern is different and the colour is much darker.
Well, I did a little freshwater fishing, lost 2 huge Featherbacks (Dao Yu) cos my hooks straightened on the White Rabbit lures, so now I know I must change the hooks on these soft plastics. But I landed a soft-shell turtle instead, poor guy, quickly released him unharmed.
Poor greedy chap, so aggressive, it was not easy to unhook and release him, but we did it.
Of course, back in deepwater, on one of the trips to Johor Shoal, Mike, Matt and me had some fun landing half a dozen Grunters and other assorted species.
Matt's fish goes on a run... look at the bend!
Mike also has a solid hookup and a drag-puller
On that trip out to Johor Shoal, we did land some good stuff, but forgot to take pics of the actual fish, so we only have the action shots, haha, so I guess PY's Grunter on the next trip has to represent the Grunters we all landed.
PY had a great kick fighting this fat Grunter to the boat
Well, I'll update the April stories later today maybe, have a great catch story to tell... the Durian Hunter strikes!
feb2007 update - Been real busy lately
... work, fishing, golf and badminton... so I have so many stories to tell but so little time to tell them. Anyway, my boat's engine gave way in Feb and had to spend some money repairing the old thing, and I had time to clear my freezer slowly by eating fish. Also spent some time doing land-based fishing with the kids. Will slowly write in the march and april stories when time permits.
Here's my standard Grunter meal with instant noodles, yummy!
This helps to clear the freezer.
Of course the boat is up and running already, and we landed some good stuff after the Snapper virus outbreak around the CNY period reduced Snapper stocks around the Ubin area. But I'll start with the simple stuff.
Went to explore the new Bottle Tree Park. The catch rate was very poor when I walked around asking about the catch. Many anglers were disappointed with zero catch but there were one or two anglers with a fish on a string and they too were upset that the bite rate was so slow. But anyway, my kids had fun. And this is why.
My daughter and her good friend Ade hold up their catch of Swordtails, Guppys and Mollys
The kids had great fun trying to catch the small fish with little nets, and the staff was friendly and helpful, ensuring that the kids caught many fish. I think this activity is really good to train speed and reflexes, cos some of the fish are really fast and the nets are tiny. Well, it was great fun even for me, haha!
Of course, with the boat out of action for a while, I had the chance to visit THE PRIVATE POND again and tangled with freshwater species like Toman, Patin and Pink Tilapia.
Courtesy of Tim, my daughter pulls a Patin close to the shore
Here's the Patin, set for release
THE PRIVATE POND is a really nice place to spend time with the family fishing, and the bite rate is so good, even my small girl can catch fish. Thanks again to Sunny Tim and Bob.
Well, soon the boat was repaired and on its maiden voyage out of the repair docks, we started landing fish again. No time to update the stories yet, so here's a sneak preview... Phil gets his revenge on the Stingray he's always wanted to catch.
Since losing a big one a few trips back, Phil has always wanted to land a ray... Here he is with a 7.5kg ray, finally. Erwyn is laughing in the back... or crying?
In fact, Stingrays are gaining in popularity as a 'good catch' and even in supermarkets, they are beginning to fetch higher prices than farmed Barramundi. At about $6.99 a kilo, calculate how much Phil's ray would cost. What I do know is that Norman has been slowly enjoying his Sambal Stingray meals for the last few weeks after chopping up Phil's ray.
OK, will update further next time, soon.
10 Feb 2007 - guess what I caught today at the Cliff...
Kings, Jamie, Jeremy and PY joined me on a Big Fish Hunt today. I was only interested in biggies, just for kicks, and I had rigged up my line for the BIG ONE.
At the first spot, everyone was excited, and I rigged everyone's line the same way, and soon all lines baited and let down. The action started quickly, with a variety of small fish landed and put into the metal well. Then, just for fun, I took out my super light handline just to see if I could catch any of these small critters.
Immediately, I landed a big Croaker and a decent Snapper in quick succession. Then, on my third drop, POW! My thin line was being stripped through my palm, cutting into the flesh a little.
'BIG FISH!!!' I shouted, and everyone else brought in their lines to watch the fight. The irony was that my rod was rigged up for big fish, and I was fighting a monster on my super light handline!
The fight was long, as I had only my palms as drag. And I knew that if I pulled too hard, the line would snap easily. So I took in line inch my inch, and gave out line meter by meter, patiently waiting for the fish to tire. Then my line started becoming more horizontal, and I knew we were in for a great acrobatic display.
Suddenly, 20 meters behind the boat, everyone saw this huge silver Saltwater Barramundi head emerge from the water, and then the whole body erupted from the water in a huge explosion. A monster of a fish just leapt out of the water, with my tiny hook embedded in its mouth.
'Whoa! That's big man!' everyone seemed to echo in unison. Now we knew what we were up against. And the fish knew what it was up against too. So it took a dive, and plunged straight down into deep water, and that's when the line really started stripping from my fingers as my handline danced about on the floor of the boat. Then, for some added drama, I noticed something scary. There was a KNOT in my handline!!!
'Oh no!' I thought, as the knotted part of the line also made its way through my fingers and reached the waterline. That was the weakest part of my tackle. How did I miss that knot in the past? So now, I had to play it even safer, knowing that a single dead knot in the mainline could reduce the line's strength by more than 50%.
As lady luck would have it, the fish began to tire, and the knot became my gauge. I would pull in the line till the knot came into my hand, then the fish would pull the knot back into the water. This went on for about ten cycles, and then I got the knot in my hand without having to give it back.
With a tiring fish, I still had to be cautious as I slowly brought the fish to the surface, and it gave one last half-hearted jump, where my hook was NOT thrown (as in many previous instances) and I knew it was mine! When I guided the huge head into the landing net, Kingsley expertly plunged the net forward and lifted the fish into the boat.
'YEAH!' we cried, and high fives went around.
Then I tried to stand and my legs felt like jelly. This was an extremely exciting Barra fight simply because I was using an ultra-light handline and small hook... and the adrenaline rush really took its toll on my wobbly legs as I tried to remove the hook. Then I noticed that the hook had been crushed! And my line was loose. Can you imagine the strain that tiny hook had to go through, the powerful jaws of the Saltwater Barra... but it expired only after the job was done. The fish was safe on deck, and we took the customary pics.
I landed this beauty on ultra-light handline after a good fight. 7 kilos of Golden Muscle
After the euphoria, we caught some other fish, and shifted around Ubin and Tekong, where some table-sized fish were landed.
Jamie had a good fight and landed this hard fighting Grunter
Then we chilled out at some calm spots.
Here we are, chilling out at the front of the boat
Kings landed some nice stuff like another Snapper and a Red Snapper. And then Jeremy lost a huge fish that took line and managed to find a snag. I felt his line and could really feel a big fish struggling at the other end. Probably a big Garoupa, but despite all our efforts, the fish escaped.
We had quite a bit of bites, and our bait was down to the last few, when I cast my line into The Deep Channel. And almost immediately upon hitting the water, my rod went into a U and the drag was going out. And I could see a big silver silhouette in the water ahead of me. Another big fish?
Yes, the fish put up a good fight. And on normal days, I would have been really happy with this fish, but I had already landed a monster earlier, and this was the icing on the cake.
I landed this smaller one at 2.8 kg, a great fish in its own right
Looks like I had my hands full today... haha
We had great fun today. Added another big Barra to the collection, and added some table sized fish.
Here are some of the fish already packed in plastic... notice the lower jaw of my Barramundi creeping into the pic?
Jamie has even volunteered to be my deckhand till he enters NS in a few months' time. Well, maybe next Saturday I'll go for some other type of fish... I wonder...
3 Feb 2007 - a short exploration
... Had a cross country run this morning, so no boat fishing for me today, and now all my muscles are aching... and all that for 16th position. Shouldn't have bothered sprinting to the finish.
Anyway, by 1pm, I found myself free and so I brought the family out to some rural area in Singapore. While the kids were playing with all the other kids, I went on an exploration, remembering a long grass area down a slope with a small weed-covered pond.
Saw Tim fishing at the larger area, borrowed a rod from him, tied on a lure, and made my trek down the dirt path and down a slope towards the small secluded pond. I was wondering what this pond held.
I arrived at the small pond and was pleasantly surprised to see that someone had cut the grass
The place looked really quiet, and the wind was quite strong, so I scouted around the pond a little, to find a good place to cast my line without getting any weeds.
Here's another look at the pond, barely the size of a badminton court
Well, I saw some splashes in the water and hopefully cast my line. However, I was disappointed to find that the lure was not working well, and there was hardly any lure action on the nilsmaster spearhead, but when the lure reached beneath my feet, I stopped it in the water to let it float up, just in case a fish would snap at the bait when the lure stopped. How right I was!!! When the lure floated up, a small Haruan shot out from the weeds and struck my motionless lure, causing a splash right in front of me, and I promptly flipped the fish out of the water.
How's this for a small Haruan, only slightly larger than my 8 cm lure
I took the pic above then released the fish, hoping it would grow bigger. The lure wasn't working well, but I overcame that by twitching the rod tip every now and then. And the action picked up.
Had plenty of hits by small Haruan just like the first one, which mostly failed to register a solid hookup. But I started noticing that when I left the lure beneath my feet, some Haruan would hang around just below the water surface, eyeing the lure. I could have sworn I saw one particular Haruan staring at me directly, and when I stared back at it, it dived into the murky depths. So... I got my camera phone ready, and managed to snap a pic of the fish beneath my lure.
Notice the shadow of an Haruan on the right of my lure? Just beneath the water surface?
Anyway, I got back to serious fishing when my wife called and told me it was time to go, I had barely fished for half an hour! So I quickly made another cast, landed another baby Haruan, released it, and cast again.
This time, there was no mistaking the take of a more powerful fish! I saw a flash of Olive in the water and my little reel had its drag going. Beautiful sound man! The zagggg of the drag. Then the fish jumped! And I saw that it was an Haruan around the One Kilo mark... interesting... well, as they say, when there are babies...
OK, landed that fish after a fun acrobatic fight, snapped a pic of the trophy Haruan, and released the bugger to breed. (One kilo is about the max size of local Haruan I've caught so far.)
Here's the champion fish of the session, ready for release... notice the usual brown slipper
Released the bugger nicely, and started trekking back to civilisation. Well, this shows that our little ponds in the wilderness still contain some interesting fish.
(Note: Haruan is a different species of Snakehead from the Toman. The Haruan is more Olive and Brown in Colour, and don't normally grow as big as Toman.)
28 Jan 2007 quickie...
After spending the morning with the family, and attending a friend's baby's 1 yr birthday party in the afternoon, I realized I had time for a little evening fishing. Kings smsed me at the same time I was thinking of fishing, and we decided to meet at the boat.
By 3.30pm, the boat was launched, and we headed into the strong winds towards Tekong, but curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to see if there were any stray reds left behind. So I hung around the Ubin area near green rock and to my surprise, the Reds were in a cooperative mood.
I quickly landed several Red Snapper in succession, even though I was quite far from the fish farms, and thought that I could fill up the ice box, but disaster struck, my anchor pulled, and we started drifting away from the rock.
We tried re-anchoring several times, but just could not get the boat to stay above the spot long enough to catch anything else, and the wind was getting stronger, so we headed to the Cliff to hide from the wind, caught some junk fish and big Duris, and Kings landed a Ribbon fish.
These two Red Snapper are quite healthy and right sized for eating... caught a few of these
Then we moved to Gap and almost immediately after casting one line into the snags, my rod went into a good bend, and the fight was on. Having lost many fish to the snags before, I knew the drag had to be dead tight, and I put full pressure on the fish, and the fish felt big, still managing to pull its way into the snags. Damn!
I thought it was a big Grouper, and took my time to coax the bugger out of the snags. I did some guitar string plucking on my line, let the line loose a little, and simply watched as the fish still struggled on the other end of the line. And finally, with one big tug, the fish came loose, and what I thought was a Grouper turned out to be a fat Grunter, well... not too bad I guess.
A surprising fat Grunter caught from the snags... I still would have preferred a big Grouper
Anyway, ran out of time after a super short fishing trip, and we did manage some nice quality fish for the ice box. Good excitement too. Verdict - the stray Red Snappers are still around, and have spread quite a distance away from their point of origin. I think there will always be a few left for anglers in 2007.
21 Jan 2007.... JIA LATT!!!
It seems like I'm playing more golf than fishing these days, but now that the tournament season is over, I'm back to fishing.
Heard from the boatel guys that a farm net full of Red Snapper burst at Ubin and some boats were having a field day at the expense of the poor fish farmers. It seems some boats were inconsiderate enough to tie up to the farms, and some anglers even cast their lines into the nets... sigh, is this what fishing in Singapore has degenerated to? No fish outside so catch from people's nets? That's stealing.
Anyway, I'm in no position to moralise cos I'm no saint myself, but my preference is still to enjoy a relaxing day at sea rather than anchor with so many boats around and get lines all entangled, and risk getting in trouble with the law too! (Heard the marine police were called in at one stage when some boaters got over-enthusiastic.)
I didn't do much fishing, as I said earlier, cos of golf, but I did manage a cruise on Felip's boat. We took a ride from Loyang to RSYC in the West Coast on the Ponga, not a bad ride, I must say. I'm seriously considering buying another boat now, so look out for my new diesel boat (so I can make day trips to Horsburg).
Anyway, I'm amazed at the smooth ride in rough seas we had yesterday, especially off the East Coast and off Sentosa, and we only used $30 of diesel... that's the selling point. Now I'm using about $200 of petrol just for a daytrip around Ubin. A difference of $170 is HUGE!!!! I wonder what colour I'll paint the new boat? (Still dreaming.. hahaha)
By the way, we passed the scene of the broken nets and saw only 2 boats anchored near the nets fishing... well, for some, I guess enough is never enough. And who knows, maybe I'll catch some stray remnant Reds on my next few trips. 10 000 fish is a whole lot of fish!
6 Jan 2007 - First major trip of the year...
with Norman and his family members, Philip (back for revenge over the monster), Iggy, Russ, Tim, Ian and Ash.
After meeting up at Changi Village and getting supplies from Gina, we went to the boat and immediately headed for a Guhood spot. (Since there were newbies onboard, I thought it would be fun to let everyone tangle with some fish, regardless of quality.)
When we reached the Grunter zone, things were a little quiet at first until I opened accounts with a shark.
"Shark?!!! Kewl!" came the comments from all the young anglers. I guess every new angler's dream is to catch a shark, and I remember the days when I kept on dreaming about catching sharks. Now, I was surprised that a junk fish like a shark drew so much admiration. So, to fuel their excitement, Iggy soon had a positive strike and fought up another shark.
"How cool is that man!? " exclaimed Iggy. He was obviously over the moon with his shark. The two sharks were kept alive and everyone had a fun time playing with the sharks in my metal touch pool at the back of the boat.
Of course, some proper fish came along eventually, like Grunters and Garoupas, but I soon noticed the sky turning dark, so I headed to Deep Valley, where I told Iggy they were going to catch an average of 10 fish per person (that's 80 fish for the whole boat!). Iggy couldn't believe it but when I landed 10 keepers in the first 20 minutes at Deep Valley, he knew I wasn't kidding.
Soon, with some guidance, everyone was landing fish, including the young Ash, everyone except our dear friend Philip, who only rigged up for monster fish with a gigantic hook (cos he lost a monster on his previous trip with me). For him, it was monster or nothing.
So, to please everyone, I shifted to the Monster Zone, where Philip and Norm got excited about the prospect of tangling with some big rays and Kuraus, but we only landed about 4 small to medium sized rays there (3 by Phil, 1 bigger one by me).
Norm and Phil waiting for their MONSTERS
Since it didn't rain, we moved to a Snagpile and caught some more stuff there, where Russ happily fought two strong Grunters to the boat. His day was also made.
At the final spot, just off the boatel, I landed an Ang Kor Li (Red Bream) which was beautiful to look at, and a Blue-spotted ray (for the touch-pool too).
Beautiful rainbow colours on this quite fat Bream for local waters
Finally, we ran out of bait and headed back around 4 pm. All of us were contented. The weather and company were excellent, and at least a few fish were cooperative.
Here's a part of the catch... we didn't bother to take the rest out of the ice
