Yishun Dam and Pasir Ris Park

This morning's high tide was about 10am. I thought it would be a good opportunity to run over to Yishun Dam to give it a try as D would be having her swimming lesson around that area. Till now, I had yet to try out the fishing there. A dropped me off there and proceeded to send D for her lesson. There were only 2 only guys there. There rest of the people were further up, across the opposite bank. The place was shelterless, and would be terribly hot, but the weather was quite cool due to the darkening clouds.



I tried the area towards the open sea. As usual, I set up my light tackle to test if there were any small fishes in the vicinity. This would usually give a good indicator if the place was good. Small fishes = big fishes around. I used the dead prawns that I had from last night. But having defrosted it a few times, it might not be that fresh. The container of worms that the guy gave me on Friday, I left it in the car the night before. Upon opening, I discovered the worms had died. Well, so, bait was just only prawns. I waited for about 15 minutes, but no action in that direction. Someone across the bank caught sometime as they were shouting about some big fish. I changed area and casted towards the dam opening. My light rod responded very quickly, and when I reeled up, glass fish. This place was full of it. I hooked one up as live bait on a cable car rig with my Rapala. There were some todaks swimming around. I was hoping that they would be interested in the glass fish bait. But no luck.



some dragonflies flying around landing on my rod




The sun came out around 10.30am. I decided not to stay here as it wasn't too comfortable, under the hot sun and all. I packed up and when I retreived the line, I found a new fish that I hadn't gotten before. Looked like some sort of goby. I released it and we moved off to another place.



We picked D up from her swimming pool and headed for Pasir Ris Park. It started to rain, and from the looks of it, the eastern part seemed ok. The area around Pasir Ris park (elias area) wasn't raining. We positioned ourselves at a shelter on the right side of the sungie api api river for good measure. Luckily we did that as it rained heavily as I was setting up. Rain lasted about half an hour. It had been a very rainy weekend.





I went on to try out the fishing from the beach area and so, avoided the fishing from the bridge. But alas, no action at all during the period. At a distance, you could spot the bait fishes moving around in a school. But they were too far away for me to cast near them. For the first time, I rigged up my own apollo rig, and it looked quite pro. As I was retreiving the apollo rig on my Rapala, the line got stuck and felt heavy. I thought it was a goner and pulled and tighten my drag. Strangely, I could feel it moving a little. Might be a plastic bag. For about 5 minutes, it took quite a good effort to drag the line back, and to my utmost surprise, I had hooked a stingray. Fantastic, as this was my very first. It was quite amazing that this little fellow could give me such a strong counterforce on my line. And funny, it didn't even fight at all, more like a dead weight on the sea floor. On closer inspection, it was foul hooked around the eye area. Wow, very lucky. It wasn't even going for my worm bait. Must had accidently hooked it when my line dragged over where it was. Incidentally, on my other hook, there was a strange looking coral like thing. [afternote: sea pen]



sea pen




We collected some water and decided to keep it. I used my pliers to remove the sting from the ray and thereafter, it was quite safe to handle.

Shortly after this, I packed and went home. Already, the ray was quite a good reward. :)

ray "happily" in my tank