Flat fish in Tanah Merah

I must be getting better. Today, I visited Tanah Merah Canal and managed to get a decent catch (according to my standard) in a short time. I had long wanted to fish at this spot, but due to the unfriendly enviroment, had not come here till now. The place was quite ok actually, except that fishing in the night here would really be roughing it out. No lights, no toilet, far away from anyone and probably haunted too. For today, we went to the other side for shaded area near the mouth of the canal as it was quite a hot day.

I didn't bring much bait today as I didn't intend to do fishing for long. Weather was pretty hot and while I was there, I was perspiring profusely. Good for losing weight. So, all I got was just a small pack of sarong worms when I got from changi village on the way there.



This time, I only setup two rods, as I wanted to concentrate more on getting small fishes. The other rod, I used big size 3 hooks and primed it with full length of sarong worms. It got a few bites but I was too late to set the hook. For the smaller rod with the jigging hooks that I reused from yesterday, I cut up the sarong worms into small parts and baited the hooks. I held on the small rod most of the time and there were indeed quite a few bites. On 2 occasions, I managed to hook up small silver fishes. It was just like the Pasir Pasir that I got yesterday, but it had some spots on the body. They were later IDed as Oriental Sillago.

Oriental Sillago (Sillago Aeolus)


Midway, D got bored and wanted to fish. I told her to hold the smaller rod and I went to tend to the 9 footer. I had run out of bait and since one of the sillago died (it got pierced in the head by my 9 footer), I cutted it up and used it as bait. D played with the rod for a while and later said she wanted to put a bell on it. I got quite annoyed and told her to just leave the rod there. Shortly after she had placed the rod on the railings, to my surprise the rod tip started to shake quite strongly. I shouted and asked her to pick up the rod to strike. She did, but her strike was quite weak, so it probably didn't do any good. But when we reeled in, there it was, our 3rd sillago. haha, not bad.



Side view of the flounder. Too bad this is not an electronic product.


Largetooth Flounder (Pseudorhombus Arsius)


Later, I felt a bite on my 9 footer and I pulled back. But thereafter, I didn't feel anything. To my surprise, when I reeled in, I saw this flounder at the end of the line. Wow, quite excited since I had never caught a flounder before. I just saw this fish yesterday when the uncle caught it. But mine was bigger. I took some pics of it in the water and when I pulled it out of the water, it struggled quite violently. Not a bad figher. I tried to extract the hook but the hook was setted quite deeply. It actually swallowed the whole hook (size 3!). I could't qet it out and I think it died while I was trying to. Too bad, it would be interesting to have it in the aquarium. Interestingly, this fish has got 2 eyes on one side of the body. The eyes were on the top side, quite close together. If that is so, why would it need 2 eyes, I wondered? Salligo meat I read somewhere is a good bait for stringrays. Well, this fish is quite close to a stringray. :)





After this, I had run out of bait and also A and D were not too comfortable due to the mosquitos. Well, enough for today, so I packed up to go. I later read somewhere in the forum that someone caught a Queenie in tanah merah. Wow, I want...