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.