During the long break for Chinese New Year, Navin and myself had gone fishing too keep ourselves occupied. We had gone to two locations; Rawang Wild Pond and One Fathom Bank.
One Fathom Bank (18 - 19 February 2007)
The day began quite early for the both of us. We were supposed to meet up with Maniam and his friends at the jetty at 10.00am. Being Team Crazyfisherman, we were there at 10.30am. The tekong was rushing us. Told us to quickly load our gear onto the boat. The reason was the tide was going down fast. We quickly bundled our gears into the boat and proceeded to leave the jetty. According to the boatman, another 15 minutes, we would not be able to go out and we had to wait for the tide to come back in before proceeding.
The trip to OFB was eventful. We had fun on the boat listening to the stories that Maniam was telling us. He always had some interesting fishing related story to tell. We arrived at OFB at about 12 noon and the sun was really hot. To our surprise, there was hardly anyone fishing on the lighthouse. During the previous year Chinese New Year celebration, there was about 50 people fishing on from the lighthouse. This time there was on 4 guys fishing from the lighthouse.
On the way to OFB, we had made a plan. We would take turn to fish from the boat and the lighthouse. 3 people would fish from the boat, 3 would be fishing from the lighthouse. We made this plan as we were anticipating a lot of people would be on the lighthouse. However, since there were not people on the lighthouse, we all proceeded to fish from the top instead of the boat.
The selar kuning were quite abundant this time around. Even the sizes are much bigger compared to our previous trip. Navin had rigged his rod to do some bottom and surface fishing using live selar as bait. I was happily catch selar to be used as life bait. Most of the selar and tamban cought were kept in the cooler box. Towards the evening, at about 5.00pm, the selar were getting bigger. I could easily haul up 2-4 good size selar kuning during that time. However, the frenzy period only lasted for about 45 minutes.
At about 8.00 pm, Navin and Maniam decided to go out by boat to the shipwreck to try their luck. I decided to stay back and fish from the lighthouse with the rest of the guys. At about 9.00pm, we noticed that that a large school of garfish were at gathering around the lighthouse area. There were thousands of garfishes around. Naturally, when this happens, predators would definitely be around as well. Sensing an opportunity, I quickly rigged my casting outfit; which was an Abu Conolon PE 1-3 rod and Abu Cardinal 106 reel spool with 30 lb Fins Braided line. I took out a popper from my stash of lures and then waited for a feeding frenzy. I didnt have to wait long, soon splashes were heard from everywhere. The biggies are here...!!!
I launched my popper at the direction of the splashes and quickly popped my lure in.. No hit from the biggies. The only hit i got was from some foul hooked garfish. As I was popping my lure in, the treble hooks from the popper had accidentally foul hooked a few garfish in the process. This happened for a few times before I decided to change from a surface lure to a diving lure. I took out my Halco lure and waited. The first cast didn't yield anything. After a few cast, I felt something hitting my lure. Unfortunately there were no solid hook-up. I inspected the lure after that and was quite excited when I saw bite marks on them. It was clear something big has hit it. My guess was a barracuda. Barracuda is a known predator around OFB and their favorite is garfish.
The action kinda died down after about 2 hours.. No solid hookup were registered. Even the others fishing with me didn't register anything. The only consolation we got that night was a squid caught by Maniam's friend and loads of garfish caught on appolo rig (foul hooked). By the way, the two guys who went out in the boat didn't get anything.
The weather changed at around midnight. There was a thunderstorm coming and we quickly packed out stuff and placed them where it would not get wet. The storm was quite bad that night. According to Navin, the waves were huge. I was fast asleep when all this took place.
Early the next morning, we proceed to continue fishing. Looks like the biggies are not around this time. So instead of fishing for the biggies, I decided to fish for baitfish. I was happy catching the selar kuning and tamban which was abundant around the area. I managed to fill about 3/4 of m cooler box with the baitfish.
We left OFB at about 10.00 am. I would consider this trip a disappointing trip. Why? Simple reason.... The lack of action from the biggies...
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