Squid Fishing - Lab Park

I had been on this quest to hunt for squidable locations in Singapore. Ponggol Jetty, tried. Next in line, was the Lab Park that I frequent. This time there, main target was to get a squid. My largest squid in Singapore was a measly puny sized one.

High tide today was around 10pm. So reaching there, I was expecting to see exposed rocks in the afternoon. Surprisingly, the low tide itself was rather high. Current was slow, and casting a float, it would stay in the general area for perhaps 10 mins.




I rigged up my Yamashita and went around hunting for squid at the Jetty. Not long into the fishing, someone caught a very nice sized Chermin (~2-3kg). I was full of envy.

I had gotten live prawns today, since it had been sometime since I had fished with live prawns. (not counting the boat trip). So, I setup a float, with a metre long leader on live prawns and tossed it out, chanting for "chermin, please come". But float got no business, and the most was just drifting here and there.

My squidding attempt, did not seem promising at first. Totally no taps or anything. But about 15 mins into it, I suddenly saw with my eyes, a squid going after my yamashita. Yeehaa. But unfortunately, this squid quite smart, and didn't grab my lure. After a while, it was lost. Arrgh.

Biggest Squid in Singapore to date


And another time, while meddling with my float rig, I saw another squid going for my live prawn. Wow! This time, I rig up my Yozuri, orange 3 one, and cast it out. I thought that my jig might be too big, hence no bite. About 10 minutes later, a tap was felt. But I wasn't too sure, as the place was quite snaggy with weeds. It might just be weeds. But pulling in the line, yahoo!, a squid. But the squid was only caught on 1 tentacle, and I was quite worried that I would lost it. But luckily, the hookup held, and I managed to swing it over the fence, and onto my things. Bad mistake. Black ink all squirt out and mess up my belongings.

Excited children exploring the squid


Some people were passing by and were quite delighted to see a live squid being caught. Of these, there was a lady with 2 pri school children. They were so excited, that I offered them to touch the squid and take some pictures. In fact, they asked lots of questions, and hang around to see me catch another. Stressed! But after that, squids all gone. Totally no bite at all.

The jetty became dark, and would be closed soon. I moved all my rods to the Park area to continue fishing. But the Park was dim, and fishing became quite difficult. My Yozuri got caught in a snag, and was lost since it was only an 8 lb leader. Ouch. I had been losing quite a fair bit of lures, hurting my pocket.

TUTORIAL[A3]: Egging

Egging is simply the term for the act of catching a squid.





Now squids are very interesting creatures. Their attack pattern is to manovuer behind the prey, and use it's tentacles to grab it from the behind. Making use of this behaviour, squids can be caught by a squid jig, designed to capitalise on this.

The squid jig is actually a prawn looking lure, with an umbrella hooks. The hooks are meant to hook on the tentacles when the prawn is attacked from the back. Squids have good eyesight, and jigs that glow in the dark is a bonus to catching them.

If you use a large squid jig, expect lesser catches as the tiny squid would not want to attack it. But large squid jigs can catch big squids at times. Smaller squid jigs are more productive, but the catches are also usually smaller.

The act of egging is to throw the jig far out and slowly reel it back in. Other variations are to let the jig go to bottom, pull up the line like stretching a long noodle, reel in one or two rounds of the reel, and repeat the whole process. This will move the jig across the vertical water column, letting it rise and fall.

If a squid attacks, there will be a sudden pull as if you have hit a snag. If the "snag" is movable, then congrats, you have gotten a squid. But be warned. Make sure to let the squid "squirt" out all its inky contents before you get near to it. It can be downright messy.