KFC - Trip to St John

Many of us in the group haven't had the chance to visit St John island, despite having stayed in Singapore for years. Actually, there wasn't much to do there as well, except to fish. As I expected, fishing wasn't a very comfortable as there were not many shelters around, and the promising area was to do the fishing at the so called "causeway". This is the dam like area cutting across the island channel of water. The current there would be quite strong during the changing of tides.

Disembarking from the Jetty

So it was that a trip was planned to visit this island. In terms of logistics, it was easier as the ferry terminal have regular runs of ferry to St John, then to Kusu and back to Singapore every 2 hours or so during Sun. I was pleasantly surprised to see the famous Des T from fishingkaki forum leading a group to St John to catch his favourite fish ie Todak.

The "Causeway"

Our group met quite punctually and we were soon on the ferry to St John. The trip there wasn't long and we were there in like 15 minutes. From there, we headed for the "causeway". But the place was hot and burning, and we walked further down to park ourselves on the road under a shady rock. We were all impressed with the clarity of the water, and Tambans were immediately sighted when we disembarked form the Jetty.

My aim for this trip was to experiment on my flies to see if they would indeed catch anything. We did have some bites from todaks on the surface of the water, but other than that, hardly anything else. I skirted it around the rocks but no groupers were interested in it. What did work was sending out live prawns on float and some of us managed to catch some todaks. It was however not easy to get them.

First Todak!

Pat was first to draw first blood and get a small todak to his credit. Todaks were definitely around although not in large numbers. After that opening number, we got more confident to proceed on.

White St John Island Ninja

Ooh...this is how it feels to get big fish

Landed and approved by master fisherman

ZW the todak master as usual had all the todak luck and he was soon fighting a big one a the other end of the line. IZ had a chance to play with it for a while to refresh his memory of how fighting a todak was like. WL (IZ's friend) also experienced a bit of the excitement of having a big todak on the line. ZW got the todak up and after a few fotos, we released it back to the water.

St John got no fish, only Hermie the Hermit crab

Lunch time. Eating like construction workers

I also Got!!

Wah, my fish so big wor!

All fueled up by the refresher course, IZ quickly rigged up a live prawn and targetted the general area. And indeed his curse was broken this time, and he hooked on a todak that was larger than all that he ever caught. As he was using my light rod, the fight was pretty intense. When the todak was landed, he was all smiles after having a dry spell of going todakless for 6 months already.

PPPPIAK!

I didn't have much luck in luring/flying and even though I tried here and there, no monster came to bite my offerings. The sun was indeed getting to my head, and fishing was tough work here. I also had an accident while flinging out my lure and it caught a branch and broke my green arrow into two. Boo hoo....now I can buy a new rod. :P

Toot toot....walk somemore

So, despite an eventful day of big todaks, there were nothing much else from the clear blue sea. It was just such a waste as the water was ready good, something that cannot be seen in Singapore. Only other interesting fishes that I saw were a large group of half beaks, and a small group of mullets swimming around here. Our kaya bread didn't work as it wasn't branded one like Ya Kun. Haz. Strangely, all of us didn't even try bottom fishing.

Read it here