SAFYC "ACK"

I had planned to be at Kelong Acheh today, but unfortunately, TC had a sudden work. So, the plan was called off. Perhaps, we could be doing it next week instead. So, being a Friday night, I thought of fishing at SAFYC again.

Although the last attempt wasn't very fruitful, still I prefer the place due to the peace and quiet from the lack of crowd and comfortable facilities. For $5 to get such a priviledge, it wasn't too bad.

However, upon reaching there, it was surprisingly crowded. The space near the end of the Jetty was unoccupied, and we parked ourselves around the last 2 or 3 lights spacing from the end. The tip of the Jetty would supposedly be the prime spot and was always taken. The Boss of the marina tackle recognised us and was quite friendly. We bought prawns from him this time round, and paid for 2 rods, which actually cost only $7, as compared to 1 rod for a fiver.





This was to be first time using my Lemax President Royal, and I rigged a running sinker with live prawns on 1/0 circle hook. This was to be the important reason for my catch latter. I rigged up my other DNA rod with an apollo with smaller size 4 hooks. But totally no catch with this rod (actually a tiny weeny cardinal). But half hour later for my President, there was a sudden strike, and the rod did a precarious dip and bounced a couple of times. I quickly grabbed the bouncing rod before it could be dragged into the sea. Good thing that my drag was set just nice, and the hookup was solid. I could feel the fish still at the other end, giving a good fight. The fight lasted for about a minute, and few times, my lines went zipping out as the fish resisted my attempts to reel it in. When it hit the surface, I thought I had gotten an Emperor. I tighten the drag and swung it in. But to my pleasant surprise, it was a nice and shiny AC (John's Snapper, Lutjanus johnii). The circle hook was nicely hooked on the lip and there wasn't any chance that it could have thrown the hook. Somehow everything connected nicely, from the timinng, the settings, the equipment and importantly, the fish finding my bait. This was to be my very first good size ACK. Gotten some smallish ones before, but those didn't count. A good break from the poor fishing lately.

However, after that, the fishing went down. There were totally no bites at all, and the prawns mostly came back alive and kicking. I tried some squidding with my ShrimpHunter, but no impact. But, there was a group of english speaking family fishing at the end of the Jetty, and into the Marina. It was not allowed to fish there, but when the Boss wasn't making his round, they would sneakily fish around that area. And boy, was it productive. I was told that they had caught about 3 boxes full of fishes today. It was like fishes after fishes, from snapper to groupers and what have you. I got tempted and went to fish around them, on the ramp to the boats in the Marina. However, I had no luck at all, and the fishes were not biting my bait. Seemed that the corner was the good spot, and I didn't want to squeeze into them as they were already fishing over there.

I gave up and went back to my spot. Around 1.30am, I spent my last prawn and called it a day. D was already very sleepy and quite miserable from the cold. At least it was a fruitful trip at the beginning. But this time the experience wasn't too positive. There were too many people today, and a group of youngsters were fishing like 1metre from me, and constantly crossing my lines. Furthermore, they were smoking non-stop and that really irritated the hell out of me.

And what you know, when I was washing my rod, I saw that the big guide of the President was a little bit slanted. I used my fingers to try to twist it back, and "piak", the guide and the metal ring broke! Boo hoo hoo...that was the end of my "new" rod, my "one fish unlucky lucky rod".







Argh!


Yum!


My Rod Graveyard.