Thursday, April 30, 2015

Observation Epsilon - Pekan

The main agenda of going to Pekan this time is to take aerial footage for my video. The video title is 'The Meaning of Fishing'.

I can still remember when I first started fishing about 20 years ago, it was for the food. As I was only relying on my meagre pocket money and income from odd part time jobs, I would try to make every fishing trip worthwhile. I bought a set of fishing setup off the shelf of a supermarket and was thinking to myself, how many fish could I catch in order to write-off this 'startup costs'. The value of the fish caught was always weight against the money I spent on buying bait. At first I would keep a mental count of my expenditure but as time went by, I realised that it didn't matter to me whether the fish I caught could worth more than my bait anymore.

It was only after sometime that I decided to buy a proper fishing setup. Of course not to mention that I broke my first fishing rod when my line got stucked in some tree branches during casting. As usual, with a budget constraint, I chose a very cheap reel and rod. But at least this setup was much better than the one off a supermarket shelf. I had a small tackle box the size of my palm with six compartments, it was the one that came with the supermaket setup. It held all the fishing tackle I had at that time. For bulky items like a styrofoam float or sinkers, I would just put them in some recycled plastic bags together with my fishing reel when I travelled around to look for fishing spots. It was not surprising that I didn't make much progress in my fishing 'career' with these kind of tackle and limited knowledge.

The break through came when I was enlisted into National Service and maybe because of fate, I was posted to Brani Naval Base. If you asked anyone who had fished in BNB before, he will tell you that it is a fishing paradise. The fishing was simply fantastic! We did not require expensive baits like live prawns, and by the way, live prawns were a luxury to me during those days. I always envy those anglers I saw at the jetties using live prawns as bait while I was using some soft and squishy prawns that I dug out of my mom's freezer. In the base, I didn't even need to steal my mom's dinner ingredients anymore, there were plenty of chicken and night snacks in the cookhouse kitchen, and they worked like a charm. I would bring back enough fish for my family to cook for a whole week after every duty. There was one extraordinary night that 47 sea bass were landed! It was something that I would always remember. With conditions like these, duty nights were easy to pass and my army days ended in a blink of an eye.

Though with quite an experience in fishing paradise, my fishing knowledge was still limited. My knots were still not properly tied and many fish were lost due to this incompetency. After I came out of the navy, I went home empty handed for almost all my fishing trips. Even if there was something, it was catfish or some juvenile fish that was so small which couldn't even fill a cat's stomach. I could not get used to the pathetic catch I used to catch before I was enlisted in the navy anymore. It was really really demoralising and I was on the verge of giving it all up. But then I still could see other anglers catching fish. I kept questioning myself, why they were able to do it and I couldn't. During that period, it was also about the time when the internet became more widely available to people. I tried to search for all the information I could find on the internet, and I bought knot tying books too. It was then I realised that contrary to the common perspective that fishing is just about a rod and line, there was so much more into it.

The flood gates were open. The more I know about fishing, the more interested I was to test the newly learnt skills and techniques out. I also explored deeper into more remote potential fishing spots and discovered another side of this city country that I had not seen before. Though my catch did not improve instantly, in fact it remained sucked still most of the time, I was somehow happier and did not feel that demoralised anymore. Perhaps it was because I know that eventually one day I would be able to unlock the secret to fishing if I kept on persisting.

Along my fishing journey, I met a lot of friends and gurus, and I benefitted greatly from them. They had accumulated decades of fishing knowledge in their specialised field and were kind enough to impart their knowledge to me. My perception of fishing had totally changed too. Fish is not viewed as food anymore. They are my companion now. Though some of them may still sacrifice themselves as food for me and my family, I am and will always be grateful to what they have taught and given me.

The video will tell the rest of my story.

No comments:

Post a Comment