Sg Layang

I had told PT that I might just try out fishing at Danga. I had seen before many people trying over there. So came early morning, we shuttled over. But to my surprise, the traffic was rather heavy at the checkpoint at 6.30am.

Reaching Danga Bay, we found all the food stalls closed. Last time, there would still be some early bird stalls. But they might have figured that it wasn't worth their while. Lately, my observation was that Danga Bay was lacking in maintenance and was beginning to show signs of neglect. Not what the hype used to be.

Water there was quite dirty, though there was a good population of half beaks. But there were also quite plentiful of rubbish floating around. I decided against fishing here, and moved to Permas to find breakfast.

Family of dogs


Shop just around FishingLine


Nice deco


Yummy breakfast


We checked out a pretty new coffee shop which turned out to be quite good and cheap. It was renovated in the style of Yak Kun and quite well managed. After that, I decided to recce the place that was mentioned in the motoring forum, about the todak restaurant.

Todak Restuarant


View from the car park (can see Sembawang)


Eating by the seaside


The waypoint was found on my GPS and it was a simple matter of plotting the route. Reaching there, we found that the restaurants were closed. Apparently, it was only active in the night. Sure enough, we could see Sembawang shipyard at a rather close range. I walked around to check out the fishing conditions. Verdict was, not a good place. Murky water, floating rubbish. Couldn't be any better than Sembawang just across the river.

Next try was this little icon of a fish on my GPS. From the map, it was slightly above Kong Kong, and looked to be a out of the way place. My interest was piqued, and since I had nothing much to do, I decided to drive there to look see.

Kong Kong road


From the turn, it was a 9km track


Along the 9km way


Reaching


The spot on my fish icon


The route was an interesting one, and at some points, very rough and 4wd terrain. But luckily most of it were quite decent roads. At one stretch, it was a 10km road in, and I was doing mostly 10km/h at the beginning due to the rough road. At that rate, it would take me 1 hour to reach there. But to our good fortune, after 5 mins of the bumpy road, the road turned out quite good and was doable at 60km/h.

All the charges and contact here


Their Marina


Someone was fishing here for free


Reaching my "fishing spot" destination, we found ourselves at a small village. And true enough, there were people carrying tackles. I was wondering where to. A talked to the locals and found out that just in the middle of the river were some floating fishing farms. We were told that the fishing was over there. Interesting, and from the prices on the sign board, only at RM10 per pax! We were told to call the farm itself to come pick us.

We found out the info from this house. This double as a food and tibit shop for the floating farm


View of the floating fish farm


King crab


I was immediately game to try out the fishing and unloaded all my fishing gear. We called the farm and very soon, a young chap on a motorised boat came over. The distance was very near, barely a couple of minutes. We boarded and was soon on our way to the floating farm.

Nice and clean environment




They were selling small arapaimas and siakaps


Reaching there, it was indeed a nice and comfy place for fishing. There wasn't much people and we had ample space to fish around. Furthermore, there was shelter, food and drinks, and even live baits. I think ice could be provided too, but I already had ice in my icebox.

We settled down and I started fishing. At that time, it was the turning tide, and water current was quite slow. I rigged up a bottom apollo rig and did luring with my other rods. I got some live prawns at RM.50 each (cheap). But since I didn't have a pump, my prawns didn't last long. My bottom rig on my black rose got a strike and I was hanging on for dear life. It felt heavy and ran under the platform with my line rubbing against the edge. Not good, and I lost control of the fish. Fish did a strong run and my line snapped at the main. Arg and that "f" word came out of me. I had been getting this situation consecutively and was cursing at myself for not loosening the drag to let the fish run. The rest of the fishing folks were looking at me, and was dismayed at my loss.

My Zauber


Trying luring


No choice, re-rigged and down went my apollo again. On my luring, I was thinking no fish. But on one cast, the all too familiar tap was felt, and then a couple more times. It was confirmed when I saw a todak following my lure right up the platform until it saw me on the horizon and turned away.

I was just telling A that this place not possible to lose lure. But me and my big mouth, lure unknowingly got stuck on the rope that was holding the platform. Ropes are lure killer as it was closed to impossible to disgourge a lure from a rope. Rocks maybe, but rope, never.

Fish surfacing


Finally!




Just as I was luring, my black rose took a bent again. YeeHa! Fish on again. This time round, I had changed to a 20lb leader and my drag wasn't too tight. And fish this time, didn't make any niffy trick of running under the platform. It was mostly diving down. Yet it felt like a good one, and my line was spooling out quite frequently. About 3 minutes later, it did a final 10 sec run and after that, my guess was that it was tired. I slowly cranked the fish up from the deep and finally when it broke water, I was a nice sized Grunter. Not wanting to lose the fish, I asked the helper for a net to land it safely. Soon Grunter was on deck, and I had broken my recent line snapping curse. Grunter was weighed to be 2kg.

The rest of the folks were happy for me and after the fish, I was receiving smiles from people that I don't know. :) Most of the others were not getting anything and the only other fish that I saw was a Duri.

Packet lunch. (not bad)


Sons of the owner? They were enjoying fishing as well


We ordered lunch and it was pretty decent. But after lunch, the fishing took a different turn. The current became very strong (new moon) and even clipping on a size 5 sinker couldn't hit bottom. This was to go on until about 3+pm, when I decided to leave. It was quite hard to fish was such current. My guess was that this place would be productive when the current is slow.

The other blue patch on my map is the reservoir.


Leaving the farm


The total bill came up to only, RM20. This must be the cheapest kind of fishing that I had. And furthermore, no limit to how long to fish. I was wondering what if we were to stay for 2 days? And the service here was definitely friendly, and all the facilities well thot of.

Way to another floating farm. But ground was too challenging here


Oil Palm plantation


We drove out and I headed for my usual rest stop at Jusco before heading home. It was an interesting day, with an unexpected chance to fish at a "kelong" type of place. I would definitley be back, with couple of my fishing gang.

Yummy! Grunter fish head curry

Muahaha! Fish #6 (Salty #1), #7 (Salty #2)

Yesterday, I had planned to get back to fishing, having missed any opportunity on Friday. I got hold of a 2nd hand Alivio Spinning reel from the forum and was quite pleased with it. Condition was good and I was itching for it to touch water. High tide was to be around 12am and I was planning to go somewhere nearby for a quick fix, as I had yet to recover from my Jet lag. But tide was low in the afternoon. Since it was not good time to fish, I went to explore some potential places.





There was this river that I would pass often on the way to work. There was even this very picturesque house beside the river bank. I got curious and decided to see if I would be able to drive somewhere near to it. From the expressway, I turned out after crossing the river and found myself around some Ponggol LRT sub station. I noticed a dirt track towards the river and decided to go for a look see. At the end of the dirt track, I came to the river bank. There was actually someone fishing on the far right, his scrambler parked beside him. The place looked ok but at that time, there was a boat with someone doing water skiing. Not good, would surely scare off the fishes.



Next stop was to check out the charcoal factory. The first time I was there, I did not dare to go pass the iron boom gate. There were "no trespassing", "no parking" signs. This time, I decided to drive in and disregard the signs. On the way in, there was a group of Ah Laus there, with bird cages. Not sure what they are doing. Reaching the charchoal factory, there was no one in sight in the factory. However, there were 2 chaps doing fishing. But the place itself, was not too clean. Bits of rubbish all over. And same thing, the boat with the skiier was there. The 2 rivers were somehow connected. Nevertheless, another possible spot.

At night, I decided on Semb Park for lack of a better choice. As D was coming, better to be at somewhere comfy. However, upon reaching there, it was fully occupied (being a weekend) and the boys there were rather rowdy and noisy. Furthermore, the stench from the raising tide was quite strong and I didn't fancy myself fishing from a canal of rubbish. I decided to turn back and go somewhere. I had not been to LSR for night fishing before, so I thought it would be a good idea.

LSR was nearby and we reached there soon after. There wasn't very much people, just 2 groups of youth. However, they were serious about fishing. Every spot on the jetty, there was either rods or a handline. I noticed a big pack of catfish, for the bait. I went to one corner to setup for luring, but couldn't do very much. Cast a bit out, I would cross into their lines. One guy came to chat to me, mentioning that luring wouldn't work at night. They had caught a few fishes, one of which was a good size toman. They had somehow left it on the floor of the jetty (for it to die?). After a while, some more people came, another group of young people. So, this place was looking to be a popular spot for group gatherings. And people were complaining about ah laus doing baiting in LSR.





Today, High tide was around 1-2pm. In the morning, after sending D for swimming lesson, I went to do somemore spot of recceing. I read about the spot near to the Senoko fishing port. Sounded interesting. It was quite near and I drove there to check it out. Outside the fishing port, there was a cemented track leading around the fence. That must have been it. I walked in and found the place. But, the water was terrible. Just like the Semb park condition. Full of rubbish and more. There was even an iguana browsing through the rubbish (too late to snap a pic of it as it crawled into the crack in the floor. see pic). I concluded that the water quality north of Singapore is in a terrible shape. Fishes I might have caught, I wouldn't dare eat. On the way out, a family came in a full lorry load and proceeded in. There to fish or to throw more rubbish? I wondered.

After D's lesson, I decided to head towards east, for better water condition. I was thinking of Tanah Merah, but on the way, I passed by Pasir Ris. Hmm, had not tried Sungei Api Api. That place looked decent (clean and comfy), I turned in to give it a try.



I rigged out my rods and starting to bait it with sarong worms. These worms were rather messy to handle. And stink too. Anyway, I casted a few times and set it up with bell and rested it on a stiff bush. There were a few alarms, but everytime, I got to it and pull up the line, the worms were gone. Hmm, interesting. I casted again and decided to hold on to the rod. Yes, I could feel something biting. I gave a yank to set the hook and pulled up the line. Yes! there was definitely something. When I pulled it in, there it was, my very first salty. A catfish. I was hoping for something more pro, like barracuda or shark, but still, catfish would do.

Feeling energised, I reset the rig and cast again. In a few minutes, I could feel another bite. I pulled to set the hook, but it felt like I had missed. However, when I pulled the line in to check, there was a very small fish, but it gotten the slip when I was pulling it up.



I decided to go back to luring and setup the rod to rest on the bushes again. Interestingly, I saw a few people luring. But none of them got any results. The bell vibrated again on the bush and I quickly run to it. But it stopped. Haz, I pulled the line in to check and to my surprise, there was my 2nd fish. Not sure what the fish is. [found out later that this was a Javelin Grunter]. Not bad, sounds garang...like "I caught a Grunter" has a nice ring to it than "I caught a catfish" :P

Enough is enough. Not bad for a day. The 2 fishes, I decided to release it. Got D to perform the ceremony and send them on the way home. This spot seemed quite good. Even though the fishes were small, I was very encouraged that I could actually hook up a few. Would definitely come to this spot again. It would forever have the distinct honour of being the place where I got my first Salty.

Javelin Grunter
http://www.handlinefishing.com/whatsthisfish/grunts/javelingrunter.htm