Thursday, January 26, 2006

Catch Report : One Fathom Bank Ep. 3

Location : One Fathom Bank, Straits Of Melaka
Departure from Tanjung Harapan Jetty : 3:00 pm, 21 January 2006
Arrival at Tanjung Harapan Jetty : 4:00pm, 22 January 2006
Baits used : Live baits (selar kuning, tamban), fresh fish and fresh squids
Number of rods : Sharma : 3 Rods, Navin : 3 Rods
Price : RM150.00 per person inclusive of boat charges, bait, light house charges
Total Catch : Batfish (Telinga Gajah) – 1, Stingray (Pari) – 2, Tetanda – 2, Gerut-gerut – around 2-3 kilo worth of fish, Tamban – about 4-5 kilo worth of fish, selar kuning – about 3-4 kilo worth of fish

We received yet another offer to go fishing at One Fathom Bank (OFB). We were planning to go to OFB during the Chinese New Year holidays, but our usual boatman had space in his boat and wanted us to tag along. He offer us RM100.00 per person. What the heck… To cut long story short, we went for the trip.

The sea was kinda rough that day. Normally, our journey there takes about 1 hour 15 minutes, this time our journey took almost 2 hour 30 minutes. Along the way, we had the unfortunate luck of bumping into a Malaysian Marine Department boat. The Marine Department stopped our boat and made our tekong board their boat. The Marine personnel on board as our tekong where were we headed, and then advised that we turn back. According to the Marine personnel, the sea is quite rough and can be dangerous to small boat. Hrrmm…. Decision..decision… should we heed the marine personnel’s advise and turn back or stick to the original plan? Being true ANGLERS.... we decided to carry on with our initial plan. We waited until the Marine boat was out of sight, then we proceeded towards OFB...

:::... MARINE DEPARTMENT BOAT ...:::

We arrived at OFB at about 5.00pm. We wasted no time and after quickly unloading our stuffs, we started to jig using apollo. We kept some fishes in our bait box to be used later for as live bait for bottom fishing. We were jigging till about 7.00 pm. During that short period of time, our total catch of tamban and selar kuning was about 7-8 kilos all together.

The first few hours of bottom fishing didn't yield any results. The bites were only coming in at around 9.00-10.00 pm. During that time, Navin and myself started to use squids at bait. Our target fish at that time gerut-gerut. The gerut-gerut in OFB were quite easy to catch. you don't have to you a big hook. A small circle hook maybe size 1/0 or 2/0 is enough. Gerut-gerut are relatively each target. Once you have cast out you bait, do not rest your rod. Hold on to the rod. When you feel the fish nibbling at your bait, give a jerk to set the hook. Since circle hooks need little or no jerking action to set the hook, these fishes can be caught easily. We caught a lot of fish using this technique. In between that, we each caught 2 stingrays (ikan pari). The action stopped around 2.00 am. By then, the tide has changed and then we proceeded to do bottom fishing.

Navin was on a roll that night. He had a few strikes. His best stike for that night was the two tetanda fish that he caught. He had a good fight with the tetanda. Especially the bigger fish. He was all smiles after the catch. He couldn't stop smiling.


:::... THE TWO TETANDA NAVIN CAUGHT ...:::

The highlight of this trip happened just before we were going to leave OFB. The boat was supposed to fetch us at about 2.00 pm. At around 11.00am, Navin's rod took a mightly dip. He was using squid slice as bait. He had a solid hook-up. He fought with the fish for about 10 minutes before we could finally see what fish he was fighting with. It was a batfish (telinga gajah). After some initial difficulties, the fish was finally landed. Navin was all smiles after that.




:::... NAVIN WITH HIS 2.5 KG BATFISH (TELINGA GAJAH) ...:::



:::... NAVIN ALL SMILES AFTER HIS VICTORIOUS CATCH ...:::

After landing the batfish, we didn't do much fishing. The sun was at it maximum at than time. We just chilled and waited for the boat to come get us.

When we got back home, we laid all the fish onto a canvas sheet and seperated them according to categories. Till next time... happy fishing....!!!

:::... OUR TOTAL CATCH ...:::

:::... POSING WITH PART OF OUR CATCH ...:::

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Catch Report : Pulau Indah, Port Klang

Location : Pulau Indah Jetty, Port Klang
Date : 9 January 2006
Time : 9.00 pm
Bait used : Live prawns, fresh squids, sea worms (pumpun), live mullet fish (ikan belanak)
Number of rods : Sharma : 2 Rods, Navin : 3 Rods
Total Catch : 5 – Gelama

Chronology of events

9 January 2006 (7:30pm)
Called up my fishing kaki, Navin, asking him where on earth is he? He was supposed to meet me at my place at 7:15 pm. It’s already 7:30pm and he is STILL at home. Yet again, our fishing trip never seems to start on time. According to the GREAT Navin, the tide was supposed to come in at 7.30 pm. He wanted to start fishing as the tide was coming in.

9 January 2006 (8:30pm)
Still no sign of the GREAT Navin.

9 January 2006 (9:15pm)
Finally, Navin arrives. After loading his gears into my car, we headed towards Port Klang.

9 January 2006 (9:45pm)
Arrived at Pulau Indah Paypond. Wanted to get some fresh bait for fishing. Got 10 live prawns and 4 mullets (ikan belanak). Along d way, we stopped at a roadside stall to get our pumpun bait. After getting the necessary baits, we then proceeded towards the Pulau Indah Jetty.

9 January 2006 (10:15pm)
Arrived at the jetty. Guess what? The jetty was EMPTY…!!!! We had d whole jetty for ourselves. We then proceeded to unload our equipments from the car.

9 January 2006 (10:35pm)
First line goes into the water. I was using pumpun as bait. There were bites but no solid hook up. Maybe the hook was too big. I had to change my hooks. Shortly after changing hooks, I got my first fish. It was a small gelama. At that time I was using my 8 foot medium heavy Abu Garcia Rod paired with my Penn reel which was loaded 25lb mono line. Seeing that the fish was small, I decided to change to my Shakespeare rod. It was a light action rod. I paired it with my Abu Garcia Cardinal reel which had a 17 lb mono line. Ligher rod, better action. Seeing that the pumpun was not getting anymore bites. I changed my bait to prawn. Since we had a lot of live prawns, I took one out from the bait box and cut that fella up to use as bait.

9 January 2006 (11:30pm)
By now, I had caught about 4 fishes already. It's time to try out the latest arsenal in my tackle box... SOFT BAIT. Recently i went down to Tightlines Sunway and managed to met hold of some soft baits from Storm Lures. I rigged a small bait... Cast... Reel...Jerk... Reel... Jerk.... Cast... Reel.. Jerk... Reel... Jerk.. Cast.....

10 January 2006 (12:30am)
Tired... Been casting, jerking and reeling for the past hour without a single bite. Time to change my rig. Back to pumpun. Manage to get another gelama. The GREAT Navin is starting to get frustrated... His trusted Abu Garcia Workhorse rod doesn't seem to be giving him anything. Not even a single bite on his rod. What a pity. Hehehehe...

10 January 2006 (2.00 am)
Time to call it a night. Until next time.

:::... 5 gelama chilling in the cooler box ...:::

Fluke Shot Toman

Christmas Eve 2005. Received a call from my cousin Jeishen in the morning asking me if I was interested to wet some lines. Due to the fact that it was Christmas Eve, and my mom had something planned for Christmas, I decided to give give this trip a miss. A decision that I would regret later.

Later in the night, I received a mms on my phone. I thought that the mms could be from one of my friends who wanted to wish me Merry Christmas. I was wrong...

The mms was from Jeishen, holding his fish. A bloody toman weight almost 2 kilo. According to him he had a good fight. Good for him.

A few days later, I met up with Jeishen. Due to my curiosity, I asked him about the toman. I couldn't help laughing at him when he told me what really happened. The story goes like this.

Jeishen was actually fishing for lampam. He was using dedak as bait. What happened was, a baby lampam took his dedak bait. As he was reeling in his baby lampam, a monster of a toman saw the baby lampam swimming helpess and decided to make a meal out of it.

To Jeishen's credit, although it was a fluke shot toman, a toman is still a toman. The trill of getting a toman is always wonderful. A big congratulations to him...!!!

:::... Jeishen with his fluke shot toman ...:::

Monday, January 09, 2006

Catch Report : Kelong Fauzy Episode 2

Saturday (7 January 2006). Left the office early for a short fishing trip at the kelong. Normally me and my fishing kaki will do a 12 or 18 hour fishing trip to the kelong. This time however, due to time constrant we had to cut short our kelong fishing. We planned for a 5 hour fishing trip to the kelong. BAD IDEA..!!!! (read on to find out more).

Arrived at the jetty at around 2.30 pm. Bad luck... As soon as we unloaded our gears from the car, it started to rain. HEAVY..!!!!! We had to sit at the jetty to wait for the rain to settle down a bit because our boatman refused to go out in the rain. at about 3pm the rain stopped. YEAH..!!!! We quickly loaded our gears onto the boat and headed of to the kelong.

Arrived at the kelong at about 3.15 pm. Luckily there was not many people on the kelong. There was a group of 6 people on the kelong at thast time. Well... they were more interested in having a good time rather than fishing. There were 3 guys and 3 girls there. Use your imagination. Hehehehe...

Upon reaching the kelong, we realized one deadly mistake that an angler shouldn't have made. We had failed to check for the tide before leaving KL. Thus, when we arrived at the kelong, the time was going down. And it was going down fast. My guess was at that time, the depth around the kelong was only about 4 feet. Imagine fishing in 4 feet of water. Since we couldnt fish around the kelong, we decided to cast as far away as possible from the kelong. Another mistake.!!!

The kelong is surround by corals. One wrong cast, your rig will land in coral infested water. The moment we tried to reel in our line, it would get stuck. Things are not looking good for us. I switched to Storm Soft Bait lure. Tried casting and hoping that the biggies (or whatever fish) will be tempted by the bait and take it. No such luck.

At about 5pm, we switched to apollo jigging, Hopefully we can land some selar kuning, which is said to be abundant around the kelong. No such luck either. No bites, not nibbles. I would say that every 10 times we jig, we would land one selar kuning. The odded were greatly increased after some time. Maybe after 20 jigs we would land one fish.

At around 7.15, the boat came to fetch us. Me and Navin were tempted to tell the boatman to go back and come get us the following day. But then, we had a function to attend that nite, and we were already running late. With a heavy heart, we left the kelong. Our total catch for the day, 7 selar kuning.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Dilemma....

I need advice from all my loyal readers out there... I am planning a major change for my blog. Currently, I am blogging everything and anything related to fishing. I plan to start blogging about other things that has been hapenning to me. I don't wanna limit my blogging to fishing only. I have other interest as well that I would like to share with you people.
PLEASE leave a comment to tell me what you think.

WISHING YOU & EVERYONE AT HOME
A WONDERFUL, EXCITING,
FRUITFUL & PRODUCTIVE
NEW YEAR - 2006.

MAY THE ALMIGHTY SHOWER YOU WITH
GOOD HEALTH, HAPPINESS, FORTUNE
AND PEACE OF MIND THROUGHOUT THE YEAR.