A Ray of Hope

The night before, Pica Frnz met up at east coast car park G to spring a surprise on me. Interestingly, that's where the famous 6 pipes is. I had known about this place, but as it would be very dark at night, I had never try fishing here.

Tonight, I decided to give it a shot, and packed all my stuff there. It would be good cycling ground for D as well. In fact, I recently discovered that if you cycled straight on, you would emerge from the Safra club at Tenah Merah. So, after work, we headed for Changi V ("Again!", said D) for dinner and baits.

We reached the place around 10pm. High tide was to be 12am. As we were walking there, I thought why not just fish around the canel area, leading from the 6 pipes inland. The area there was quite brightly lit and the cemented floor is nice and comfy. So, ok, I parked all the things there and in no time, casted out 2 apollo rigs and 1 floater.

The water at that time was quite rough, so much so that my rod was dipping up and down. Seeing such a strong current, hopes were a bit dashed, as likely to be quite fishless. In fact, that place was rather quiet. There were a few bells but upon retreive, nothing.



But I was lucky tonight. For some reason, a stingray went for my prawn at around 12am. The rod rang and I thot it was another false alarm. But when I retreived back, the reactive force was very strong. In fact, this would be the strongest that I had felt for my contender. My rod was bending like nobody's business. An uncle came over to look at my commotion and when we realized that it was a ray, he helped to lift it up with his hands on the line. I was quite afraid that the line would give way, but it being a 20 lb line, it held fast. So, about 10 minutes later, we managed to get the ray up. The tail was very long. With the help of the man, I held down the tail and A went to get the cutter to nip it off. Surprisingly, we couldn't find any sting on the ray. This handsome fellow was spotted like a leopard, quite unlike the brown ray that I caught at Pasir Ris. And it was quite a sizeable one. Good size for a table fare.

After that ray, nothing at all through the night. My prawns were coming back intact and kicking. Some malay guys came over to asked about what fish I had. I showed them the ray and they were impressed. They quickly put out their rod near my area, hoping to get one themselves. But I didn't think anyone got any. I was just lucky. The place itself, didn't give me a good feeling as the action was too slow. It would probably be better further up, nearer to the 6 pipes but when I walked by, I could see that it was full house with surf casting rods all over.





I packed up around 2.30am. By then, D was already very tired and grouchy. I took some proper pictures, and A went on to cut it up and prepared it for a sumptous meal.