Observation Alpha 2 - Pekan

The weather for the second day was excellent. It was sunny with some clouds to serve as shade once a while. Maybe it was due to the bad catch yesterday, the young captain's father decided to bring us today instead. He is specialised in fishing for parrot fish and when I boarded the boat, I saw 2 plastic cartons full of baby mud crabs inside. I felt that we were in better hands instantly with the Captain prepared everything beforehand. He also bought some kambong from the nearby market as bait.

The parrot fish spots were much nearer than yesterday's. We didn't spend much time on travelling before we could wet our lines. As mentioned by the old captain that it is very easy for parrot fish to burst your line off by using the sharp coral edges. We experienced what he said shortly at the first spot. Parrot fish won the first round. The whole stretch of sea is covered by patches of coral reefs and we moved from one to another. Sometimes we won the battle, and sometimes we lost. At the end of the day, it was 5 wins for the parrot fish and 3 for us. It is a matter of life and death to parrots if they lost and the results showed how tough they were.

When sun was going to set, we went to a nearby unjam to try our luck and something rare happened. In fact it was the first time I encountered this. A barracuda about 30cm long was caught on a small 20g jig. And as it was fighting for it's life, it was bitten by a cobia! The hook on the barracuda managed to hook onto the cobia as well. All these happened near the surface of the crystal clear sea and we could see the actions taking place. Can I say that this cobia was caught on 20g jig?

This drama was the last act of the day, and we wrapped up our trip with excellent delicious cobia sashimi processed in my favourite way during dinner.

Observation Alpha 1 - Pekan

Though I had been to numerous fishing trips on a boat, I had not actually observed in details how a captain steered his boat, parked at fishing spots and planned his route. So this time round on my Pekan trip, I was more on observation mode rather than thinking what fish I would get at the next spot.

First day was bad as the rain started from early morning till late afternoon. We had to tied ourselves at one of the unjam at a slightly lighter rain area to wait for the dark clouds to pass before proceeding to our destination. Worse thing was, the rain came with lightning. All of us did not dare to hold onto our rods to fish while waiting. In the end, I pulled the line out of my reel and started hand lining for squids with my lure. Since we were at an unjam, and all my reels are spooled with braided line, I suppose that was the most logical thing to do at that point of time because even when there was a squid at the end of the line, the pull would not be able to cut my finger.

Took photo of this as it was my first squid caught on hand line.

We realised that the rain was not going to stop after some time, so we decided to proceed to our destination though it was still drizzling. When we reached, the sun finally came out. The terrain here was amazing. It was a plateau shaped like a horse shoe with the plateau at around 11 meters depth. The center of the horse shoe drops to 25m. I caught my first GT on popper at Pekan here.

But I was a bit puzzled as all the areas that we drifted, was everywhere on the plateau except the sunken center portion of the horse shoe. I thought that would be the most productive place where the fish can hide from the current? Too bad I was not the captain.

To be continued...

Virgin Trip - Postmortem Part 2

After all the commotion, it was 1030am when we reached the second wreck which was further east from Eastern Bunker. As usual we drifted around the wreck, and we caught one golden snapper and a gu hood. There was another fishing boat anchored there but no catch from them was sighted. It seemed like drifting was a better option. Just when I decided that for the rest of the day, we would be drifting up and down the spots, my engines died. We had finished one 25 liters of fuel tank at our second spot early in the morning!

Ok changed of plans, we shall anchor instead of drifting. But after we anchored at the spot, everything became quiet. So we moved off to shallower waters. The third wreck is directly under a buoy, we had to anchor very closed to it. After a while and not even a nibble, we decided to have our lunch. Cold Japanese soba with water melon as desert. Priceless in the middle of the sea under the hot sun.

Our fourth spot was another wreck at angler bank but this time I couldn't find it on my sounder. So I just let the boat drift along the channel. There were no actions, and all my pre-planned spots had ran out. I took out my sea chart to survey for potential spots again. I found this nice coral patch at the back of Tekong facing Malaysia, maybe we could give it a try. Just when I asked everyone to lines up, a stray grouper decided to have his lunch. It was caught while we were retrieving our lines.

When I was starting to cruise towards our next destination, I saw a cluster of boats near the reclamation land area off Tekong. Since I had ran out of spots, and plenty of time to spare, no harm going over to see what's happening. By then it was 3pm.

We noticed that they were all fishing boats when we arrived. Without knowing anything, we just dropped our lines. While we were waiting for the fish to bite, we saw the other boats kept hoisting up fish like golden snapper and threadfin! My heart beat accelerated, and it didn't take long before we caught ours, then another, then another. Two groupers and two golden snappers were landed at this spot, no threadfin for us though. Among them was the biggest catch for this trip, a 2.3 kg golden snapper. This spot was really a lucky accidental find indeed.

I started to ponder about a few things because of this spot. I always believe that fish bite most during the change of tide, something that I learn from past experiences. But that day the high tide was at 6:30pm. The fish was biting like crazy at 3pm plus. Another abnormal occurrence was the colour of the sea water. It was brownish at certain portions and the usual blue at the other. The separation line was very well defined, it was not a gradual transition between the two sea colours. Is it because of this phenomena, that the fish was biting at weird hours?

Anyway we left the spot as it was getting late. On the way back, I was delayed when my cap flew into the water and I had to turn back to retrieve it. It didn't help when I ran over my cap the first time with the boat. Luckily it was not man overboard.

When we were turning into MCC, the second petrol tank emptied. Overall, we enjoyed this trip very much with a couple of hiccups here and there, and using lots of petrol. For me first time being the captain, though I didn't catch any fish, I was not disappointed at all. In fact I was very happy to see the delighted faces of the anglers when they had a fish at the end of their lines.

Here's the closed up view of our total catch. And while I was taking this photo, I was thinking of which spots to go for our next excursion.

Virgin Trip - Postmortem Part 1

We set off from Marina Country Club, MCC, at around 830am. Our original intention was to catch some bait fish i.e. tambans, as bait though we already bought 1.5 kg of live prawns. We preferred to have more varieties for the fish to choose. So we stopped by the buoy just outside Punggol jetty to try catching some. However today was not the same as my previous kayak trip, there were no tambans. We only managed to catch one baby selar. In order not to be seen as six idiots on a boat parked near a buoy catching tambans, we decided to move on to our main objective.

After about 30 minutes of boat ride, we reached our first spot. It is a wreck at Eastern Bunker. At first when I was approaching the spot, I thought that gigantic container ship was anchored directly on top of it. Luckily it was still about 40 to 50 meters away. As I scanned around for the wreck using the sounder, another boat with all senior anglers arrived. They anchored straight away and started fishing. Using their boat as the marker, I tried to drift around them instead of anchoring.

During our first drift, we caught our first grouper! Talking about beginner's luck here. After we drifted pass our "marker", we made our second drift. And guess what, we caught another grouper! All these while, we didn't see the other boat caught any. Maybe drifting was more effective during that time. However we still decided to anchor to save fuel.

This was my first time trying to anchor a boat. Anglers who fish on boat before will know very well that positioning of the boat is very crucial for catching fish effectively. And how well the positioning of the boat depends on the skill and experience of the skipper. I got to consider three main factors, sea depth, wind and current before dropping the anchor. These three factors will result in sort of an equilibrium position of the boat. And this is not all, after the angler drop their lines into the water, the lines will also drift with the current. All these have to be taken into consideration to position the boat in such a way so that when the bait finally reaches the bottom, it will be at where the fish are waiting, usually hiding behind the wreck from the current.

Anyway basing more on instinct than anything else, I told my crew to drop off the anchor. After the anchor was down, the boat still continued to drift. This is normal as the current and wind would eventually decide its final equilibrium position. But the problem was, our boat seemed to be drifting on a collision course with our "marker". When we got too close for my comfort, I started the engines and told the poor anchor man to pull up the anchor. I was not quite sure what went wrong, but the anchor just got stuck.

At this moment, the MPA boat arrived to add on to my headache here. They announced through the loud speaker that we were not allowed to fish here and asked us to move off. The group of senior anglers moved off but before they did, one of them even shouted out to us, "Do you know how to anchor one or not?" Oops, looks like it was easy to spot a beginner. Now back to my tricky problem. On one hand, our anchor was stuck. On the other, the MPA boat was waiting for us to move off. We were going round and round in circles, while the MPA guys were getting impatient.

Then suddenly we realised that maybe the anchor rope got stuck at the propellers. I lifted up the outboard motors and true enough, it was entangled there. We promptly uncoiled the rope, lifted up the anchor and proceed to our next fishing spot.

Captain's First Log

Appointing my first mate was easy, I knew him in 2008 when I was doing my military exercise in a naval base during my reservist. I was trying to catch that giant rabbit fish beneath the harbour which kept teasing me, by using a bent safety pin. Suddenly out of nowhere, a hand appeared and gave me a fishing hook. I knew I found a fishing buddy. He is Tay.

Introducing our first crew member, Kylie, the only female angler on board. Please do not be deceived by the fact that she is a lady and will think that she is a noob. In fact, she is one of the most experienced angler I know. And many times, the luckiest too, including for this trip. She caught the biggest golden snapper.

Sometimes you get to know friends even when you are in a different country. I knew Andrew when I was fishing in Bangkok years back. We had been fishing together since then. With his build, he was my anchor man for the day.

It took me a while before I found out that there is a fishing enthusiast in my company. I poisoned him deeper by bringing him to my fishing trips. Now he is ready to go anytime whenever there is a chance to wet his lines. My reliable fishing buddy, Wei Loon.

Last but not least, introducing my new found fishing friend. He is none other than my chiropractor, Bill. As I said, you get to know fishing buddies anywhere. He helps me to maintain a healthy back to ride the waves.

They were my fishing crew on my maiden trip on 19th May 2013. It was a Sunday.

And this was...
how the legend of Captain Q began...