Car Park 5

Spent the whole morning cracking my head for my assignment. I was duly exhausted by 2pm and needed some fishing relaxation for myself as a reward. Headed for changi today as I was around the area. High tide is midnight today, but I couldn't fish till then as I had to wake up early tomorrow for a drive up to Malaysia with some forum friends. So, I had to find somewhere that is fishable during the low tide. Changi car park 5 seems to fit the bill and I got myself there around 5pm+, after a hearty dinner at Changi V.



I parked myself to the very end in front of the SAF jetty. There is a sign there saying no fishing 20 metres from the fence. Well, the last seat next to the jetty was around 20 metres, so ok. I setup my rod and stuff, under the scrutiny of the army guards (with rifles) and a policeman there







By the end of the day, I got a few catches on my light tackle. My loomis rod got a 3 bites (bells were ringing) but I couldn't strike any fish up. Quite a good sign. My first fish is a very decent nasi lemak kind of fish. I like :)[Afternote: Common Silver Biddy, Slender Mojarra]. My second fish was a oriental sillago. Hmm, been some time since I had gotten this. Good, no cat fish. But what do you know, my next fish is a cat fish. But this particular cat has got an eel like tail. [Afternote: Black Eeltail Catfish] A different variety. A said it was good to eat. Oh well. My last 2 was the Pink ear emperor that I got from taneh merah before. Not bad.

Towards the end, someone came and park himself between me and the fence. Kind of inconsiderate, as he will surely cross my line being so near. Hey, I thot no fishing within 20 metres of the fence?? I saw the guard walking to the man, but he didn't say anything. He set up his rod and casted very near to my spot. I retreived my line and for his sake, cast straighter out towards the sea. Previously, I was trying out the spot nearer to the bottom of the jetty. Unfortunately, I ended up crossing my line with my heavy rod. After struggling to untangle my line, I decided to stop and wanted to pack. Man at the fence now suddenly got approached by the policeman on duty. He had a few words with him, probably to tell him that there is no fishing allowed there. :). The man then packed and moved somewhere else. But by that time, my line was too tangled up and I sniped it off and decided to go home.

I gave my remaining prawns to the malay guys at the chair next to me. Well, they were very friendly after that.

Raining Cats and More Cats...

Today, being Daddy's day, I got to choose where I wanted to go. Since I had to be back early for my chat session for my course, somewhere near and convenient would have to do. So, I went back to bottle tree again to continue trying out the area. D got along her scooter and went to have fun on her own. The bench near the front was occupied and we walked deeper into the canal to get the next seat that was like 200 metres away. Some previous group of people had camped around the area, evident from all the bbq stuff and left a terrible mess, burnt bits and litter all around. Some people are just so damn inconsiderate.





A while into the fishing, there came a sudden downpour and we were all caught in the rain. Luckily A went back to the car to get umbrellas. The thing about the place here was that there wasn't any shelter for the whole stretch of the park. We hid behind the umbrellas and everything got wet. But anyway, it was ok as most of the stuff were waterproof. The rain ended about half hour later and we got back to the fishing soon enough.



This time, we kept getting small catfishes on every cast. There were some Glass Fish too, and A was fortunate enough to get a decent 1 foot Greenback Mullet. But all the fish were on the light jigging rod with sabiki hooks. Over here, easy to get. We got almost 20 cat fishes in all.

I still had no luck with my floats on my other rods. This time round, I also tried the cable car method. But after leaving the live bait on the rig, it was still alive 1 hour later, with no catches. We spied some decent foot size batty kind of fishes near the edge, but couldn't seem to get their interest in our baits.

I have improved my fishing skills to the extent that I could almost guarantee small catches. In fact, it is rather easy. Just use the sabiki hooks (very small hooks), bait with prawn meat, cast, and wait. With my slow action light tackle, most of the time, they will hook themselves. Don't even need to strike. However I still don't have much skills when comes to catching big fishes, or table size fishes near the surface for that matter. Guess more experiments would be needed.







The water kind of turn dirty once a while when the tide brought the dirty water from the canal to the sea. We saw a dead decent fish floating downstream. D also had fun catching all manner of strange looking snails.



We left the place around 6pm so that I could hurry back to join my chat session. All in all, quite a good experience, our first fishing in the rain, with the most catches. Almost giving up on the floating method. Just what could be wrong...hmmm... Now, need to get back to my assignment...*stressed*

Time in a Bottle

D wanted to blade today, and a good place would be bottle tree village. Beside it is the sungei kiri park connector, a long stretch of flat jogging track from the bottle tree village till the other end near Yishun. Although I had fished here a few times, today would be the first time during the day. As I was parking, I spotted a few people with rods walking to the area. "Die", I thot, "should crowded". But to my surprise, I was only one of 2 groups of people fishing at the canal. The other malay family was further up, nearer to the mouth of the canal, and under the hot sun.

However, there came a big group of people shortly, doing some sort of team building sort of activity. They made hell lot of noise and was all over my area where I was fishing. Luckily after about half an hour, they moved further down the canal to where the steps were to launched their man made raft. So, I had a little peace and quiet after that.





The tide was just nice, high at about 4pm. Actually, there were lots of baitfishes around here. I rigged up my light jigging rod and caught lots of Glass Perchlet and 2 Long-tail Tripodfish fish. I think total more than 10 of the Perchlet. If I tried hard enough, I could easily get a hundred or so. The place was teaming with it. 2 or 3, I used as bait...but so far, I didn't find it effective. My other 2 rods got no luck with my live prawns. But my bottom rig did sound off my bell once, but when I struck, nothing and the prawn was gone. Other than that, not much of an action. Still can't quite figure out what was wrong with my floating setup. Up till now, nothing at all, just throwing prawns into the saltwater.

I finished up the prawns and since the fishes were not effective as bait, I gave up trying. D went to blade further down but she disappeared from sight. We got worried and A went to look for her. Ended up she bladed till rather far away (about 1 km) down the park. She got a good scolding after that.

What's My Line?

2 of my reels were running out of the lines due to my constant line snagging on the rocks. Had to respool the line, and I took the opportunity to do it today, having a bit of time off. Made a stock check today and these the lines that I had used so far.

Some personal review on the lines.
Okamoto Stella - Surprisingly thin for a 15 lbs line and so far served me very well. Low memory (tendency for line to coil around after being in the spool). Only gripe is that it is maroon in color. Yucks.

SureCatch Dynabriad - Supposedly the cheaper end of braided lines. Looked like army comscott line, limpy more like a green army colored string. Tendency to fray after repeated usage. Quite hard to snip with my scissors too. But so far is reliable and strong.

Duel Long Drive - thin, smooth and very fine line. Due to this, few times got tangled on my spool if keep the line tight while reeling in. When that happens, it is downright messy. But ok, never snap on me before.

Sufix Xcelon - Color is nice, but the memory for the line is quite high. Tends to coil around in circles easily. Other than that, it is quite ok.

Nikko Navis - Thick and rough line (but 35 lbs, quite expected). But it has the reputation of having a smaller diameter compared with other brands for the same poundage. Color is transparent.

Sufix Elite - Just got it. No comments yet, but fanciful tangerine orange color. I like:)

SunLine QueenStar - Just got it too. This one in flouro pink. :)) Quite ex for a mono line.

Backyard Cat

Took off today and decided to continue exploring my exploration of my backyard fishing area. Timing for tide was good, high at around 9-10pm. We got dinner and I set up near the jetty. Today was peaceful and quiet and not much people around, except for an indian chap walking around. But he was ok, kept quite a polite distance and I was not disturbed by it.

However around 7+pm, a van drove up and they ended up to be the workers in the jetty. We had to shifted our "camping" area to make way, but they were nice about it and very apologetic. I took the chance to ask if he could retrieve my line that got badly thrown and was stuck at the fence. It so happen to have rigged up my berkley peeler crab. Must be an ususal sight for him. But the funny thing was that he unravelled the line and threw it back to the sea. *sigh*. I had earlier snipped off the line and was not linked to it in anyway. Well...

Throughout the night, nothing much, but I did see my float bobbed a couple of times, although upon pulling up, nothing. I might be rigging it wrongly..might have to balance the float with more weight to offer lesser resistance to fishes grabbing the bait. Will experiment more with it. The whole session, I got a catfish (about 1 foot) and a crab, which D thot was soooo cute. We tried to keep it but it died the next day. Not sure why..

Backyard Jetty

Came back today for another attempt. Went further down the road to where the jetty is. Jetty itself is not accessible to public, can only fish beside the main entrance. But the place itself is quite spacious, only problem is that I could only cast in one direction. There was only a small area for my 9 footer to swing. A bit to the left, would hit the tree, to the right would hit the gate. At the end of the day, I expectedly did hit the tree 1 time and the gate 2 times. Rod got a little scratched. Heart Pain.

As usual, I rigged up my Gloomis with the weight float, baited with sarong and casted. So far, I have not have any hits with this method. Beginning to wonder if I had been doing the right thing. One problem with the weight float is that the line would be very slack since the float will move around. If there was any bites, I wouldn't be able to strike well. But still, so far, even the prawns were not taken. Might there be some problem with the presentation? Need to find out more about this.

For my second rod, I rigged a sabiki hooks baited with sarong. This time, I am using a mid size hooks. Not half an hour into this, I got my first bite. Interesting fish, according to A is quite good eating.



But the fishing after this went downhill. Lots of people came around and stand around me. I really don't like that. Couldn't they see that I am fishing, and maybe would be polite to stand some distance away? This area, also lots of blanga, and chinese national workers. Some have the cheek to come and touch my rod bag. I had to ask them to go away, not very politely, cos by that time, I was already annoyed. Earlier on, he was standing right in front of me when I was baiting the worms.

But today being a Sunday, this may be the usual crowd around here. Maybe compared to lots of other places, already pretty good.

When I finally packed in the evening, I had 2 small Glass Perchlet (just like yesterday's catch, and the unknown fish (later ided as Big Goby fish) and 2 small crabs.

Fishing in My Backyard

Just "discovered" this spot. I would sometimes take a long route on the way home along admirality road via this small lane that is just along the north coast, next to the causeway bridge. It is a rather quiet place and the view from here to see Malaysia and the jam at the bridge is actually quite good. Previously, the shoreline along here was quite dirty and I had never thought that it would be suitable to fish from here.

But on my latest detour here, I noticed that they had "cleaned" up the place. Now, there is a new cemented walkway along the coast with a proper sea wall and railings. Hey, not too bad at all. The few times I passed by, the water actually looked quite clean.



Today, I decided that I would give this place a try. It is so near to my house. In fact, walk over is also quite feasible. (think it is less than 500 metres). I reached here around 3+pm and the tide was already going down. But no matter, as the water was still quite reasonably high. I setup a floating rig and casted away with my prawns. Water, from the looks of it wasn't too bad. Not choppy, small ripple..my guess is that it was quite suitable for a good outing. However no takers for my prawn on my floating. I setup another rod for bottom rig, with prawns too. But the place is a little snaggy. Few times, hooks got stuck on something, lost a few sinkers and hooks. All through the afternoon, no takers for the prawns. But from the view on top, I could see alot of small baitfishes.





Much ado about nothing, I setup my light tackle rig with sabiki jigs and baited it to try to just catch something. As expected, I managed to catch a small fish. It was later identified as a Glass Perchlet. Not bad, as I have not caught this fish before. A few moments later, another one got hooked up. Just as I was wondering if there are bigger fishes around, I sighted a table size fish swimming rather near the shore. Wow, it looked quite decent if I could catch it. But unfortunately, when I tried to reel back my floating rig, it got stuck. While I was fighting with my stucked line, it just swam away.



The place looked quite promising, just that today wasn't quite my lucky day. Will definitely give it another try again. Maybe the area nearer to the jetty would be better.