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.