Lost Chermin - Lab Park

It was a perfect day for an evening hour of fishing. Tide was around 8pm, just nice for a late afternoon into 8, catching the rising tide sort of thing. Andrew texted to fish this Sat, since P2 was to be with his nanny. We discussed about various places, but I decided on targetting for Chermin in comfort. Since we were attacked by sandflies 2 days ago, A and I didn't want to do any rough ground fishing just yet. To make things even better, weather was just great, the overcast, cool and windy type. It was just great to be on a jetty with such a setting. On a normal day, standing on this jetty at 4pm would indeed be a crazy thing to do.



I arrived rather early after getting prawns from Taman Jurong. But, as there were some events going on, the parking lots were all taken up. I had to park a little far from the Park itself. This didn't look like the usual crowd for a Sat afternoon. But I realized that it might have been the school holidays. Anyway, these were not the fishing crowd, and the Jetty was just as empty like normally.



I took some time to set up a normal apollo rig. Chermins seemed to be best targeted by a 2 hook apollo. My other rod was for squidding, my usual try out while I wait sort of activity. Andrew came around 5pm, and made the mistake of parking rather far away. There used to be this shortcut to the Jetty, but it was closed. For that, he had to make a long walk to reach the Jetty. Before he arrived, I had a few wriggles on my rod, but nothing was hooked. He too rigged up 2 rods, one for chermin, and the other for small fishes.

Seeing that my squidding was not productive, I changed to tamban jig and did some jigging. It was fairly successful, and I caught I think about 10 or so. With a tamban, I changed the jigging rod to a floating rig, and waited out for any surface action.

Despite a few trembling on the rod tip, I couldn't get anything. There were some possible signs of crab action on our baits. We lost a few bites, due to the prawns being eaten on the top half. Might just be signs of crabs.





The sun started to set, and it was a pretty sight. I could understand why I had met quite a number of photography enthusiast on my many trips here. It was a nice place to be catching the setting sun, against all the backdrops of ships and refineries. I took some setting sun pics, but with my lousy phone cam, it didn't look that good.



It started getting late, into the 7+pm, when suddenly, Andrew's rod gave a nod. He picked it up, and all of a sudden, the line started spooling out and rod turned into a bent. I helped to remove the bell, and the fight was on. From the left of the jetty, he moved to the right to try control the fish on the other end. When it surfaced, all gushed in awe at a nice 1+kg chermin in the water. But it was rather heavy, and Andrew asked for his DIY gaff into his bag. I took it out to him, but didn't managed to gaff the moving target. Seeing that the fish wasn't too big, he decided to try lift it out of the water with his line.

But it was a bad decision as the hook gave way, and he lost the fish. However, mr chermin was still swimming in circles round and round the water. It must have been wounded. Down went the gaff, but it didn't find the right position to get a hook up. Furthermore, it was rather late already and the visibity wasn't so good. After a while, it disappeared from sight, and was gone. Such a waste.



After that, it got quite dark and it was pretty hard to see anything. We aimed to pack at about 8pm, just nice to leave for dinner. While we were packing, all of a sudden, from the south, we saw a huge ball of orange flames flared up into the sky. Wow, it looked alot like fireworks. But if it was not, it was certainly something serious going on. We were too far away to hear any sound. I tried to get a picture, but by the time I got the camera ready, the fire had susided. Maybe we would read about it in the papers.

We left the place around 8. It was a good attempt today, and what a waste about the chermin, else it would certainly be a very fruitful trip. But this definitely confirmed that this place was productive for Chermin. I would surely want to try it again another time.