KFC - Ed Pro Pond

It was recently made known to me that there was a local fishing pond at Pasir Ris farmway 3, near to the places where there were many aquarium and dog farms. I was asked by a forum friend to meet there so I stepped into Ed Pro Pond for the first time. They were doing fly fishing which I heard they had 3 takes but didn't manage to control it to land.

Ed Pro Pond consisted of 3 areas, one salt water pond, one prawning "pond" and the last and the biggest, the fresh water catch and release pond. I was quite surprised that the pond was a rather popular one well visited by people. In the short hour or so that I was there, there were numerous catches and mind you, big ones too. It was possible to catch the famous Mekong catfish without having to fly to Thailand to do so.

That night, I asked ZW if he was interested to pay it a visit. I didn't check out the price that afternoon and from what I saw on the internet, it was $50 for 5 hours. Rather expensive. But we went down anyway to have a look see and not thinking to touch water at all. When we arrived, we read on the notice that it was possible to fish for 2 hrs for $15 at the C&R pond. That wasn't too bad and we paid the money and was soon fishing for the first time at a local fishing pond.

While we were paying the money, I had a chat with the worker and discovered that flies wouldn't work at night. As for lures, it would need to be debarbed and converted to single hooks. So asking what would work, he recommended us chicken liver. Well, I had never tried this before that was as close to "fear factor" as you could get in terms of bait. But the bait was cheap at $1 a big pack. So we decided to do fresh water "baiting". Something that you could not do legally in singapore.

1st Landed Patin ever (helper said 5kg)

My 2nd Patin that was lost

True enough to the worker's words. I had barely parked my rod for 10 minutes and out shot my lines. I had anticipated it and had purposely loosen my drag. If I hadn't done so, my rod would have flown into the water. The fight was hard and intense and soon (about 5 minutes), a Patin surfaced. Wahoo, my very first Patin ever. Helper came over to lift it out for photo taking and soon it was released back into the water. I re-rigged and toss out to the water again. As I was helping ZW with his rig, my rod again "flew" a little before lines went spooling out. Wah, another take. I fought it but it felt smaller this round. It was yet another Patin. Seems like Chicken Liver = Patin over here. But as it was near the edge for us to lift up, it sudenly thrashed and splashed into the water again. And this time, the hook came out and I lost it.

ZW got a take

ZW was impressed and soon he too was on one. But his lines were not tied well, and the hook came off. His second take, he didn't fight well and tighten the drag too hard. The mainline broke (20lb) and fish was lost. 3rd time, he was better trained and he finally managed to land one. But as I was helping to try boga the fish for photo taking, the helper came over. I thought he was helping us but he just unhooked the fish and let it go. Argh! Poor ZW didn't have any photo to show for that catch. But it was videoed, luckily.

Helper with the 6kg Pacu

Time past very quickly and our 2hrs were up. As were were leaving, the neighbouring group (which was rather quiet) had a big hit. This time, it was not a Patin but a huge 6 kg Pacu. It was definitely an interesting short session, and a very good training ground on how to handle big catches. At $15, I think it was quite worth the experience.

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