1st Fishing 2007

TC said to try SAF Yacht club again at changi. Having just bought some new gear, he wanted to wet his stuff. The last experience there wasn't too good, with me landing 2 cats only. However, I thought the place was quite fishable and the the fishing was bad due to wrong timing and such.

We met at CV to buy bait and then were at the club around 10pm. Jetty was surprisingly packed again, and we only got space at the starting stretch of the jetty near to land. This time round, a man came around and started collecting money for the fishing. I wasn't spared even though I was guest of TC, he being a member here. So much for the free fishing. But man was very friendly and gave us pointers on where and when to fish. According to him, now was the season for trevally and there had been some catches of zhaomeng and chaoxi recently. He also told me to fish around the rocks as it was a good spot for KBL. That was music to my ears and getting one here today would be very good indeed.

I rigged up 3 rods, 1 L&F 9 footer, 1 Lemax and 1 Light tackle. Water was calm but I only had rigs for LSBF (meant for strong current), but no matter I rigged up live prawns and shot out the lines. The light tackle, I used dead prawn meat and fished around the rocky areas near the shore.

The rest of the rods were very quiet. There was a false alarm when my 9 footer apparently caught something strong. But after some pulling, I saw the light stick floating in the air. Darn, line was crossed with the anglers outside the club. From mine and their throwing angle, we would met at 90 degrees some 100 metres away. Someone later also thot he got a biggie as the line was peeling off his spool quite fast. But again, it was another cross line with the opposite angler. Turned out that only my light tackle had any action.









Around 12am, little bites came and I pulled up my first fish, a small cardinal. Snap snap, some pics and I let it go. A little while later, another cardinal. And then, my first reasonable catch for the year, a reddish big eyed fish (red soldier fish). Then followed by a better catch of my biggest grouper yet (slighty bigger than my hands), a tiger (flowery) grouper. All the fishes were kind of small and I released all of them.

TC was not getting anything and was feeling frustrated and started grumbling about going back to kelong again. Some bites here and there and spent a bit of time battling with the snags and some problems with his lines. The area at the front was very snaggy and I myself lost 3 rigs. But the fishes seemed to be there. Casting anywhere else was not productive. After the grouper catch, action all died down. Someone came over and said a KBL was caught and then later, an ACK. Hm, but that was further down the jetty, the deeper end.

We stayed till quite late, around 3am and then called it a day. Good thing about this place was that the toilet was very clean and hotel standard, and came in handy as I had a sudden stomach ache from the CV food.