KFC - Mamod Kelong

This was done as a by-the-way thing on my recent mega long distance road trip round the whole of malaysia peninsular. The trip was shorter than I expected, and I had time to spare to do a kelong trip for a couple of hours, before the long drive back to my comfy bed in Singapore.

My last trip to this area was to visit the Kelong at Bagan Lalang, called Nazri Kelong. From my chat with some people there, I was informed that there were some more Kelongs in the area. I had originally thought that the Kelong was also in Bagan Lalang and hence headed for the famous beach again.

Road to Lukut

Kg Chuah

Finally located the Jetty

Eh, turn where?

After lunch, we made a call to Nazri and was informed that there were only 1 Kelong (his) in Bagan Lalang. The other Kelongs were in the vicinity of Lukut. Where in the world is Lukut? I asked. I was informed then that Lukut was near to Sepang (further down south) and would require an hour of driving to reach there. I considered about it a while and decided to do it anyway. But searching my trusty GPS, I couldn't find any POI for Lukut Jetty. Darn.

Mamod (the man we called) gave us the general direction to head downwards from Banting and then to look for Kg Chua, and then turn into the Kelong. Sounded simple, but we were in unknown territory. I anyhow marked the KFC at Lukut and headed towards the general direction.

But lucky for us, along the way, we saw all the landmarks that Mamod told us. In fact, his direction giving was very accurate, and we found the Jetty with no trouble whatsoever. We reached the Jetty on time and was soon waiting for the boat to bring us there.

Finally at the Jetty parking

Boat house here

Yep, the right Kelong

Hmm, can fish from here too

But no shelter. Quite hot

Pictureque view of boats

The worker there was fetching a group of 3 pax to another Kelong which was smaller and according to him, no people. The other bigger Kelong was full and already had 30 pax onboard. We tagged along but when we reached the smaller Kelong, I asked if I could go to the bigger one instead. At one glance at the small Kelong, the fishing would not look good as it was quite near the shore.

The smaller Kelong

What happened to girls who talk too much

Arriving at the bigger kelong

Boatman agreed as the other Kelong was quite on the way back. Soon we were on board the Kelong. It was indeed rather crowded, but nothing that we had not seen at Sibu. There were rows of rods all over.

No Tambans, but quite a number of these tiny anchovies

Man with a Silver biddy. Good catch

I rigged up a tamban jig and a light bottom rod and went about trying to get some bait fish. But jigging was not effective and there were hardly any Tambans at all. I kept getting tiny anchovies instead, which I gave to the people on board to use as bait. According to them, it would be effective at night. From my observation, most were using Sarong worms, prawn meat and sotong strips.

Resident mouse to "decompose" all the leftover food

Quite crowded

Hmm. Important house. Toilet

One of the only 2 tambans I caught

Somone left the puffer here to die. Very bad :(

Mummy doing cross-stitch

Catching a Kekek here is a cause for joy

The catches were slow, and even a catch of a Kekek was something to shout about. With the above bait that those guys were using, there were some catches of Pasir pasir, Kekek, Gelama and a nice Silver Biddy. A little boy also caught a flounder as I was about to leave.

So the fishing was rather slow and did not improve when the tide was coming up.(I had arrived at the low tide with the tide coming up). I had instructed the boatman to come get us at around 7pm so as to be on our way again with some light before we hit the expressway. But boatman was late, and despite our frequent calls, he only arrived at around 8pm much to my unhappiness. By that time, the Kelong was dark and going up and down the rickety steps would be quite dangerous.

Rooms at the Kelong. Very basic

And very small kitchen

Hung like a chinese sword

Some records of bigger fishes caught here

Before we left, a boy caught a flounder

Anyway, we were soon back at the Jetty which there were some people fishing on the Jetty itself. Since it had lights and all, it was properly payable to fish there. We unboarded, paid the man who charged us only RM80 probably seeing that I was unhappy. (normal is RM40 for adult and RM20 for child).

From there, the village was rather dark and the drive out quite spooky. AsI was leaving the village, I suddenly saw a cow on my right side in the darkness. It gave me quite a scare as what is a cow doing hiding in the dark?? Shouldn't it be at the cow house or something.

Dark errie night at the Jetty

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