Bedok Jetty CR - 24/06/07

It has been a long hectic month for me at work and my poor rod and reel had not tasted any action at all during this "dry" period. With the short break I had this weekend, I decided to wet my newly purchased braided lines at Bedok Jetty along with my wife and my colleague and fishing kaki, Raymond.

With the highest tide of the day coming in at 5:28 in the morning, I met up with Raymond at around 4:30 to have our breakfast and also to get some prawns from his neighbourhood market in Bedok. After that, we were raring to go. I guess the averse break from fishing had us craving for it even more.

When we arrived at the jetty, it was not as crowded as we would have expected, considering that this was the last Sunday of the school holidays. Nonetheless, we took up our usual spot near to the end of the jetty. By 5:40, 2 of our lines hit the water with long snood bottom feeders hooked with the prawns we bought earlier while we rigged up another 2 rods in preparation for the schools of Tamban coming in at first light.

With a steady supply of live tamban after jigging for them, we changed our setups for our baiting rods. Raymond attached a float and splitshot weight setup to his live tamban while I rigged up a Cable Car rig for mine. Wifey continued jigging for Tambans and got a Butterfly Whiptail amongst her catches.

About 15 minutes after my live Tamban bait hit the water, an uncle who had tied his handline beside my baiting rod started to pull in his floating rig. Unfortunately, due to the current, we had crossed lines and we started to rectify it. While we were at this, I could see a flurry of activity in the water in front of us.

As luck would have it, my line started to tug hard and I tried to land a strike. Unfortunately, due to the acute angle of the crossed lines, I guess the hook didn't set in properly. I started pumping my rod in hope that this would help. My rig appeared on the surface of the water almost instantly with a Long Tom biting on to my Tamban. In that split second, it fell back into the water and swam back into the depths, splashing around wildly. Even the uncle was saying that it was a big one and that it was very "suay" that the garfish had to bite while we were uncrossing our lines. An estimation of it's length based on our view of it from the jetty was about 50cm. (Heart pain...)

When it was around 10 plus, the Tamban stopped biting even though there was visibly a huge school of them. Raymond was joking that feeding time was over for the tambans. Everyone was still casting their lines to try their luck but it seemed that there were no more Tamban hookups anymore.

Anyway, we managed to catch an assortment of fishes using dead prawn. It was a pity that my camera battery went dead when I tried to photograph the fishes at the jetty so I could only take them when I reached home instead.

From top: Juvenile Orange Spotted Grouper caught by Raymond, Crescent Perch caught by me and the last two hookups were by wifey, a Smallspotted Dart as well as a Green Rough-Backed Puffer which puffed up when we tried to remove it from the hook.

Thanks for reading and, tight lines!

Romzi's Catch @ Air Papan, Johor

This is a most peculiar catch from my pal, Romzi, during his very recent 1 day angling trip to Air Papan, Johor. He managed to fish out a Bar-Tailed Flathead from the crystal blue waters and was rather apalled as he had never seen anything like it before, especially being taken aback by the beautiful colours of it's tail, which in fact explains the name given to this otherwise normal looking flathead.

For the record, he released the flathead back into the waters for "another fight, another day".

Weekend Catch - 07/07/07

Here are a few catches over the weekend.

Our inshore catches from our recce cum short angling trip to the the Marina channel were (top) a juvenile Malabar Grouper and (bottom) a pesky Estaurine Moray.

Raymond managed to hook up a large Todak but unfortunately, it got away when it bit at the leader line with it's razor sharp teeth during the fight.

We have fun getting several Freckled Hawkfishes on small tamban hooks attached with prawn meat. There were also several bites (the rod bells were ringing every other second) but no hook-ups, resulting in empty hooks when our lines were retrieved. And these are sharp Owner hooks, no less. We're talking about skilled bait stealers here, probably a couple of Ah Sengs (Catfish) or larger sized Groupers.

I also joined Wifey, Dave and Anna for a whale of a time over at Taman Jurong Paypond and we were rewarded for braving the torrential winds and cold rain with 3 Barramundis (The Missus managed to fight 2 of them by herself, impressive!) and an ever elusive Mangrove Jack caught by our lucky lady angler Anna, who landed her first fish on her new Taurus rod and Daiwa reel. I know it's often said that paypond fishes don't bite when it rains due to the pond's salt water becoming a little brackish but these fishes sure aren't letting the live prawns go!

It's official. The myth has been broken. There are Mangrove Jacks in Taman Jurong. There probably aren't many of them in the pond as the owner only releases Kims on a daily basis, and that would be the reason why people are only catching Kims almost all the time.

Thanks for reading and, tight lines!

P.S Never attempt to handle Mangrove Jacks or any other kinds of snappers with your bare hands. I picked this one up at it's lower lip with a pair of pliers and it kept nipping hard at my pliers with it's sharp teeth. Scary stuff.

Tanjong Rhu CR - 30/06/07

With a little break over the weekend, Raymond and I decided to try out a recommended angling spot nestled below the Benjamin Spears bridge. With the imminent closure of the Marina channel due to the construction of the Marina Barrage, affecting most saltwater angling spots in Kallang, Marina Bay and Tanjong Rhu ( including this one) soon, we figured it would be a good time to try our luck there.

Now for all the fishios who go by the mantra "Fishing is for relaxation", I would highly recommend this spot to you. With the overhead flyover providing shade from sun and rain, coupled with an immaculate view of the Kallang Channel as well as the Marina Channel in the distance, this is truly a haven for anglers.

The only boon would be the occasional Ducktour LARC-V passing by. We had a couple of close shaves with kayakers nearly crossing our lines as well. I understand that this spot is the limit that all kayakers can go to and most of them would come over to this spot before heading back to the Kallang Watersports Center located downriver.

The tide was pretty good and we tried using live prawns attached to floats to get some bites. There were a couple of times where huge chunks of prawn were bitten off the hook. With the vessels passing by frequently, the floats were often pushed back inshore and we decided to change our rigs.

Trying out a cable car rig for fun, my bell started ringing shortly after to my suprise. It was a small Orange Spotted Grouper which decided to munch on the juicy live prawn struggling in the water. Incidently, that was the only hook-up we got on that day.

Having said that, there were several bites but no hook-ups thereafter. Often, we have reeled in our hooks to find half-bitten prawns. Raymond also had two fights but the dirty fighters went under rocks to snag his line, much to his dismay.

I would recommend short snood bottom feeder rigs for fishing in this spot to prevent frequent snags and if you have live bait, why not try a cable car rig as well? It might just work.

Thanks for reading, and here's wishing you tight lines and screaming reels forever!