Lucky Spot

Not so much for me, but for someone else.

Today, one of those "don't know why bad mood" day. Looking at the tide, high to be at 10pm. Just nice for a nice evening fishing till midnight there about. I had been itching to return to my lucky spot, the place at the kallang river where I got my first Chermin. But before heading there, we went to look see for bicycle for D, for her birthday present. She had been asking for a bicycle, and I thought to get a foldable one, so that we could put it into the car and bring it whereever we go. I did some research on the net and decided on this Dahon "sweet pea" model. Apparently, this was the best foldable bike there was. And the design was very nice too. I called a few dealers and found the price to be $300-$350. Goodness, not cheap at all. But thinking that this was to be a long term investment, I decided to get it after all. More details here http://www.speedmatrix.com.sg/webtop/sweet_pea.phtml

We headed for this place in Choa Chu Kang. A little obscure place. In fact, that place was called "ULU bicycle". The owner turned out to be a good salesman and offered very good and knowledgable service. So, we got it and D was happy as a lark. So, of cos we had to head for a cycable place next. Kallang park seemed to fit the bill and we made a detour to beach road to have dinner and pick up baits.

We arrived there around 5.30pm and the place was nice and cool. And not much of a crowd too. I parked myself away from the people near the bridge. As usual, that was the popular spot and was always occupied. From that place, I casted and found that it was a bad mistake. Spent around an hour plus battling with snagged lines. Later realised that that patch there, was just in front of the rocks. I should have known, as the last time I was there, I could see the rocks during the low tide. Stupid me. So, I moved a little to my left and the fishing got better. There were numerous bites before but I couldn't get the fish up as the rig was always snagging. Around 8pm, I still had not gotten my first catch, and had lost quite a few rigs.

Meanwhile D busied herself cycling round the place with her spanking new bike. She kaypoed around those people on the bridge and brought back to me a dead silvery fish. While, by this time, I was running low on baits and I cut it up to use as fish meat.







That seemed to turn my luck a little, and I managed to hook up a flat head on my Rapala with apollo rig on the fish meat. And a little while later, I got a small fish again on this rod and to my surprise, it was a grouper. Haha, my first grouper (that baby one I got in kelong didn't count). But this was quite a small one, around a palm size. I had wanted to release it but the hook was in too deep and we had to yank it out. I didn't think the grouper could survive thereafter and so we put it into the ice box. Darn, if only I could keep it in my tank. Should be quite impressive. Wow, seemed that the fish meat was quite power as a bait.



My light tackle now got sometime and when we got it up, it was that exact silvery fish. [Afternote: It is a Bumpnose Trevally!] It looked quite interesting and I decided to keep it. We collected some water and kept it alive. Another while later, I got another. This one was to be a stargazer (kuku). Although edible, I would rather not try my luck as this fish's spikes are quite poisonous. We tried to unhook it but the moment I stick my pliers into the mouth, it would bite it. Fierce. No matter then. I just cut the line and dropped it back to the sea.

Half way through, I was running out of bait. I asked A to use D's new bike to get to beach road to get me some baits. From there, it really wasn't too far. A managed in about 15 minutes, to and fro. Actually the location here was quite good. No mozzies and quite near to amenities.

There were two people on my right fishing, and one of them came over when I got the flat head. We did chat a little. Seemed like an educated chap, unlike the uncles and ah bengs around the bridge. He got lucky and hooked a very nice ACK around 9+pm. From the looks of it, it should be around 1-2 kg. So sad it wasn't me. :(

Around 11pm, the tide started to go down and we got see the rocks being exposed. Enough was enough. I packed up and proceeded home.