SAFYC Broken Rod

Tonight's tide was a convenient tide, at around 9pm. This was just nice for a night out after dinner fishing. I had thought of the changi boardwalk after dinner at CV, but it drizzled a little. So, somewhere safe and comfortable would be better. SAFYC was just round the corner, and I thought to try it out tonight.

Reaching there, as was expected, there wasn't any crowd. Not since they introduced the $5 per rod charge for fishing here. As I walked in, the collection man was already there making his rounds. Turned out that this man was the owner of the marina tackle there. This should be some kind of arrangement with the YC management to supplement his business. But I thought it counter-productive, as this would reduce the amount of people visting, and hence lesser sale from his shop.

Anyway, he was a nice gentleman and would greet everyone nicely. I chat with him a paid a fiver for a rod. I thought of sneaking out another rod, but I noted that he was quite viligant in his rounds, and decided against it. Everyone else seemed to be following the rules.

Good thing with this scheme was that the jetty wasn't packed at all, and I even managed to move quite far out in the jetty for a spot. There were like about 5 groups of people fishing, and that was it.

I had gotten a small pack of live prawns and did some bottom fishing at first. But the first 2 fishes that I brought up, turned out to be Kitties again (eel tail cats). I then decided to do some prawn spinning and changed my weight to a lighter one and did a slow reeling in after casting. But that wasn't effective. I managed to get a strong bite near the edge of the jetty at the bottom and when I fought it up to the surface, it turned out to be a fairly big puffer. Due to its weight, I couldn't reel in up straight away with the drag setting. Just as I was tightening the drag, the hook suddenly came off the puffer. Too bad, else I should have a pic. Surprisingly, the line nor hook was cut. Anyway, just a puffer.





Thereafter, the bites became less. Not sure why. But I did manage to have quite a few bites near the edge but didn't connect. Just as I was down to my last 2 prawns, I got a strong bite but due to my slowness, it got snagged. Even as I was tugging the line, I could feel it moving inwards. Fish must have had run into a hole and moving deeper. I didn't want to lose it and I held on as much as I could. My rod was doing a nice arc but I felt I was losing the battle. I tighten the drag some more, and suddenly, there was a "piak", and my upper part of my favourite lemax rod broke into 3. I held on with my now much shorten rod and pulled as hard as I could. The line suddenly got loosen and came up with the hook missing. Wow, that must had been a big one. Too bad now I would never know what.

Lesson learnt: Never force a snag by bending the rod. :(. My line was rated 15lbs, rod rated 8-17lbs..didn't expect the rod to give way.