Land Log II - Titbits

It has been some time since I last had fish as "titbits", so I decided to catch my supper. It required a bit of simple preparation.

 

Using bread as bait, these were our harvest after about half an hour.

 

 After processing...

 

 And after frying...

 

Just nice to go with the ice cold beer in my fridge. It was such an enjoyment to catch your own food.

Log V - The dinner

This is an overdue log of our dinner after the fishing two weekends ago. It is worth mentioning as it was the most comfortable dinner so far compared to our last few trips.

First of all the restaurant is air conditioned. The seats are cushioned. There were not many customers when we were there so the waiting time was not long. The staff were very attentive too. Most importantly the food was great!

We order tom yam steam for the grouper.

And the usual Hong Kong style steam for the leather jacket and the other two smaller groupers.

The steam timing was just right for the tom yam steam. As for the latter, the leather jacket was a bit over cooked but likely it was due to the bigger size grouper which was steamed on the same plate.

Of course, this standard of service and food would not be very healthy for the wallet - we spent about $140 for six person. Still, it was the best part of the fishing trip for me!

Log VI - Kayak

With modern technology like GPS and fish-finder, we are able to convert a kayak into an effective fishing vessel too. Sometimes can comparable to a boat or ship, provided you have strong arms that is.

The main purpose for this trip was not for the fishing actually but for harvesting mussels. Fishing was a bonus. Since we had already spent so much effort waking up early on a public holiday and pumping up the kayak until my back ached, we might as well make it more worthwhile.

After a slight delay to our plans due to drizzling in the morning, we excitedly launched our kayak at Punggol jetty. It has been 3 years since we last kayak out to harvest some home grown mussels.

It didn't take long before we filled our pails with mussels. Extracting them was fast, it was the clearing of the stubborn barnacles that grown on them which was time consuming. As I was chiseling away the barnacles, my friends were trying to get some bait fish for later use. By the time I was done with the mussels which also worsened my back ache, our bait wells were still empty. We continued on to our bonus stage anyway without any baits.

With the help of our GPS, we paddled towards a nearby sunken kelong. When we reached the area, we were greeted by schools of bait fish playing near the surface of the water. We managed to fill our bait wells with tambans in no time.

 

After scanning the area  with our echo sounder, we decided to anchor at a spot where there was an underwater structure and the fish finder was registering a lot of fishes. We threw in our self designed and self made anchor and started fishing.

 

That was when we could take a rest and take some photos with the fishing spot as our background. The schools of fish just kept surfacing and swimming all around us. I thought we would have a high chance of getting their predator, but I suppose it was not their meal time yet that day. We tried live tamban and even live anchovies which we caught over there, but the only fish we caught was a Sergeant Major.

 

After a while, another boat joined us and started fishing there as well. The anglers on board claimed that there are many sea bass in this area but we would have to be patient. Still we decided to call it a day as we were going to continue on to our last and best part of our trip, and that was to BBQ our harvest.

 

The mussels tasted simply great! They were very fresh and sweet. It was a tiring but very fun day. And now I have another spot to go to when I need to catch some bait fish, and also to prove what the anglers on the boat told us is right.

Land Log I

"The longer your lure can swim in the water the higher your chance." I said to Wei Lun as I whipped my Yozuri Metallic Sardine jig some 50m away into the dark waters in front. I was not sure what lure my friend was using, but that definitely couldn't fly far.

We moved to another spot after a few casts and by this time, Wei Lun had also changed to using a lumo jig to cover more distance. Out of the quiet darkness, we heard some commotion on the water surface to our left. By angler's instinct, we cast in that direction as we observed closely the surface for another splash that will increase our heart rate.

"Plak", a jig flew aimlessly out and eventually sank into the deep. Wei Lun's line had a wind knot and it broke off as he cast. He retreated to the nearest lamp post and started tying his FG knot under the dim light. At this time, the rate of the splashes increased and suddenly I got a strike on my jig! The struggle at the other end lasted only a split second before the hook was loose again.

I cast again and it was another strike! "Strike again!" I exclaimed towards the poor anxious angler trying to tie his FG knot while a frenzy was boiling right in front of him. But the fish threw hook again this time. Adrenalin was rushing by now, I must get one out this frenzy or I would not be able to sleep tonight. As my senses sharpened to notice every surface action that could appear even at the corner of my eye, I felt a very strong take on my jig. This time much stronger than any of the previous ones. Immediately I set hook for another two times and fish was on!

It felt like a big one, something that I did not expect to get here. After fighting the fish for some time while praying hard that it would not dive under the jetty which would cut my line, I managed to see what it was.

 

I pulled it all the way to the shore and landed it. I think I just caught the top of the food chain in that area. Lucky the small fishes residing there and lucky me.

Log V

When I last checked the weather forecast, it was thundery showers over the Northern and Eastern part of Singapore in the early morning. But the sky was clear when I reached Punggol Marina. After my previous trip with bad weather, I realized that when you are out at sea, you are really at the mercy of the weather especially if you are driving a small boat. Weather forecast has hence become one of the most important part in planning my boat trip.

We went to search for bait fish i.e. tamban, as planned at the buoys just outside of the marina. There were many baby selars but tamban was hard to come by. We caught about close to 20 selars but only 2 or 3 tambans before we decided to move on to our first spot.

First spot was near the rocks just in front of the Changi Board Walk. The terrain was good and the fish finder registered positive results. But we only caught a leather jacket here.

Not to mention that it was foul hooked. Since our target today was to try the wrecks outside Changi Naval Base, we didn't stay long here. Along the way, we passed by a patch of coral reefs that delayed us a bit more with this.

If you have noticed, the sky was not looking that promising already, and the grouper was throwing out its breakfast during photo taking. We actually wanted to stay longer as the fish was biting but we felt the temperature was dropping fast and gusts of cool wind were blowing. To avoid being caught in the coming storm, we moved further out to another patch of corals, and up came another grouper.

It seemed like today will be a great day with the only problem of dark clouds constantly lurking behind us and we had to keep out-running them. As usual, I would always give the reefs beside Changi Naval Base a go before moving out to our wreck destination. And this was the turning point of our whole trip.

We thought we were driving further away from the dark clouds behind us, only to discover there was another big cluster of storm clouds in front of us. The wind picked up speed fast and the next thing I know, I was only able to drive the boat at about 2-3 knots to avoid the 1 meter high waves from gushing into the boat.

I had to accept the fact that by now, we would not be able to go out to the wrecks today due to weather again. And my next immediate task was to bring us back to safety as the waves were getting very daunting. The boat was riding the waves on the way back as the wind was behind us. I hope my crew would still have the appetite for lunch after this roller coaster ride.

The wind was much weaker when we reached Tekong area. I suppose everyone was relieved after the bumpy ride and my shirt was all soaked. We moved from reefs to rocks, to drop offs, to everywhere I could think of. The fish finder was registering excellent results but they were not biting. I was not sure what was the reason as usually when the fish finder show something like this, there would be takes. But for today, this was not the case. Was it because of the tidal current, the moon phase, or just after the heavy rain? I'm definitely going to find out after this blog.

For the rest of the day, we only managed to catch this.

He caught this after he had just lost a big one when it threw hook. I'm sure that the memory of the lost big one will last him for a while.

These was our hard work for the whole day. At least it was enough for dinner which I'm contented and happy.