Rakit trouble

It had been a long long while since I had gone in Malaysia for anything, not to mention fishing. But there was a sudden window of opportunity this labour day, and it was timely for some rest and relaxation.

Jess and Shawn had asked me a few times to go Rakit, since Shawn's sudden craze for fishing. Fortunately, everyone seemed to be free that day. So some quick coordination, and off we went for the Rakit.

We met at the usual Danga and after a hearty breakfast, left for Rakit around 8am. Shawn brought along a friend, Alvin, who just started out fishing as well. This hobby is indeed contagious. :).

Hole that Jess's car got stuck on


We had to park here


Reaching there, we were shocked to find the entire parking grounds, jammed packed with cars. We made the mistake of driving down the undulating narrow and sloping sandy road full of potholes. Some other cars needed to get out, and the only way for us to allow that was to reverse our 2 cars back up the difficult terrain. Jess ran into some problems when her wheels got stuck in one of the many potholes. Some folks came over to help push the car to enable it to come unstuck. I too had to manoveur the car carefully to avoid doing the same mistake. It was certainly an advanced driving challenge. We finally managed to come out of the messy spot and decided to just park along the main road.

Jess draw first blood


This fellow was a good fisherman too


Too much flying can be tiring. Need a rest here


Is this a prawn or a lobster?


The rakit we were going to was the most comfortable one at Salleh. D was excited to be seeing her cats again. Reaching there, we setup and started fishing. From the water surface, we could see many glassfish, and we went on to collect them for baits.

Playful cat


That's the way to hold a cat


Alvin with his biggest catch


But other than glassfish, the fishing was very disappointing. No todaks, no tambans. But Alvin was having a good time, as even catching glass fish was something for a newbie. He got lucky and somehow managed to catch a Scat without using any bait.

My small tengirri


Shawn with his not easy to catch Selar


I did toss out some drifting rig with glassfish, with which we had such great success with Eric in some previous trip. But for this trip, it was totally useless. I did some bottom as well with glassfish, but it didn't help too. Desperate, I rigged up an apollo with small hooks and used prawn meat. Even that wasn't too effective. The best I did was to score a smaller Scat, and then a tiny tenggiri. Shawn was doing rather well with some good catches of Selar and Mackerals. He certainly has a good fishing touch. The afternoon was burning hot, and we were all drained and sapped of our energy under the scorching sun.

Sudden commotion!


A child had fallen through this hole


He is alive and gurgling out water


Safe in mother's arms


Around 2pm, there was a sudden commotion. At the far end, there was suddenly a lot of shouting, and people running around. All curious, we walked over to see what it was all about. To our horrors, we found that a little boy (around 2) had fallen into the water under a small opening. The trouble is, once under water, the entire stretch was covered up by some structure, and it wasn't accessible. The mother was wailing and crying away, while some boys were frantically trying to find where the boy was drifting to under the strong current. Some of them jumped into the water to try to get hold of the boy. After some 1 or 2 minute, they finally found the boy and pulled him out of the water. He was clearly alive and conscious. Thank God that all turned out alright. The owner of the rakit was also visibly relieved that the boy was ok.

That certainly taught D a valuable lesson as she was always running around and being out of sight. One should learn to be careful with children around the water.

Rakit Reiza - Woah!

Original plan was to head for Rakit today with Jess as hubby wanted to get a rod and reel combo. RT said to come along with family. Coincidentally, TC also called me to do a return to Rakit. So, all the stars were aligned with the plan.

But came Sat, and I was the blur head that didn't set my alarm properly. I woke up at 6.50am, and saw a missed message from RT. Looking at my phone clock, I realized that I had overslept. There was no way that I could make it over before 7, so no choice and had to put a OPC coupon. Luckily for me, I had 1 left. Crossing the singapore custom at 7.20am, the police asked to look at my displayed coupon and made a thorough check. He was all eager to fine me $10k for not displaying OPC coupon. So this OPC coupon matter, don't play play.

I regrouped with the rest at Danga coffeeshop, just slightly further up from the usual meeting place at the food court. Not a bad place to gather, and it shall be our meeting point in future. There we met Elyn's mother and P2. This trip shall be the first to the Rakit for them.

The fishing kakis


Promising spot beside the jetty


Where are we going again?


This is fun! Wooo...


We reached the Rakit around 9+am and waited a while for the boat to settle the logistic of getting us over. P2 was all eager and excited to be taking his first boat ride. We headed for Reiza since the facilities were better, and more child safe, in our opinion.

First "big" fish of the day


Die todak die!


Wah, so heavy


Soon to be hero of the day


Since I no more rods, resort to handlining for bait fish




Wah, this fish bigger than my hand! Yay!


Father and son and fish


First hour of fishing, we quickly realized that this was yet another tambanless trip. Nothing we were catching with our feathered jigs. We sent out bottom rigs and from that, some action. I was first to break the egg with a surprise catch of a puffer. There were some small fishes on baited hooks. P2 got his first feel of a rod and line with a fish. However he didn't seemed to understand much about the thrill of fishing yet.

I tried out luring for a while, but nothing was biting. There were some todaks doing the usual follow closely but don't bite routine. Behind the Rakit, the water was full of bait fishes (glass fish mainly) and surface action. But nothing. I gave up and went back to park the rods. I finally caught a small todak. Lately, I had been finding them trickly to get at the Rakit. They would bite, and throw the hook most times.

Papa, your grouper very big hor!


P2 feet


RT broke my "biggest" fish catch of the day, when he hauled out a good size grouper from the inner well. That showed some promise for quite a not so good fishing day. And then it was my turn. I saw my bottom rod twitching and held it for a while. I felt some bites and decided to open the bail for whatever to take my prawn and run. And ran it did. Good thing that I had tighten the drag and when I closed the bail, fish was struck and hooked for good.

Got my "difficult" to catch todak


Alamak, stuck!


Can see the fish stucked on the rope 5 ft away


Operation "recover Kurau"


My biggest kurau (actually, only one)


This is my day!


What Mr Kurau did to my lines (apollo rig)


The fish fought quite well, although it wasn't big enough to spool my lines. But it ran under a rope on my left and I realized that I was running the risk of being snagged. In the commotion, I took a risk and tried to guide the fish under the rope. But instead it went too close the rope and made a few turns, snagging it for good. By then, it was already near the surface and we could see that it was a Kurau! I finally got my Kurau but I couldn't bring it up.

Curly hair Rakit indian man came to the rescue and offered to dive into the water to recover my prize catch. And luckily for him, Kurau landed on my feet, to a delighted me. I was a happy man and tipped him handsomely for taking the initiative to get my Kurau.

Thereafter, Andrew landed another grouper. An equally good sized one. He was getting to be the grouper man for the trip. TC was quite fishless until he managed a todak finally on his famous giant bomb weight. Wife Jessie was quite unable to get any fish since tambans and all their friends not around that day.

Beauty and the beast


What sharp teeth you have


Thank you heaven for this fish!


The tide came up around 12pm, and I saw quite a few big splashes in the water. Switching back to luring again, I took out my unused redhead crystal minnow and toss a few times. To my utter delight, I got a very fierce strike and fish was a good fighter. I spent a minute of two trying to guide the fish away from the ropes. At first I thot it a todak, but from the way it fought, not quite. It didn't do the signature acrobatic jump and mostly went deep. When it got near to the surface, it was a beautiful bullet shape fish. I then thot queenie, but when I lifted it out of the water, what landed on my deck was a thing of beauty, a Tengerri! WAhoo! I finally broke my tengerri-less fishing history. For that matter, as well as my Kurau-less fishing history. :))

One of TC few todaks


So finally, TC was now convinced that "fish do eat plastics". Thereafter, he took out his lure and started luring too. But less than five cast later, he gave up. Luring was hard work and he went back to his todak fishing. After my tengerri, I didn't get any more hits despite trying out most of the lures in my lure box.

The afternoon came and the current got quite strong. Fishing wasn't that good and all were mostly restless by then. We decided to pack around 4pm, and then made our way back to the city for some air conditioning cum shopping.

RT catches. It's grouper for dinner


When I grow up, I want to drive a boat!


This is long lining, said RT


Lots of things to think about after a hard day of fishing


When we returned, the custom was usually smooth at around 8.30pm. Might be due to the assessment period for schooling students.

Night Rakit

I had wanted to check out the night fishing in Rakit. TC asked to go Rakit again after seeing my last successful one with Eric. So this time, we planned a sat evening to sun morning one.

TC friend, Ho, came along. It started out rather difficult, with the day long drizzle still not relenting. The traffic there was a nightmarish turn into a long bumper to bumper jam after making a right at woodlands road. I quickly manovuered the car out onto the expressway. We all decided to go in via the 2nd link. There, we were caught also in a jam, but not as terrible as the infamous woodlands checkpoint one.

Traffic in JB was not much better. Pasir Gudang was quite heavy at some stretch. But we eventually reach our Rakit, around 6.30pm after a tiring 3 hours odessey. To our shock, there were plenty of cars there makeing the rough parking area almost full house. There were many anglers coming and going. I was quite worried about the Salleh one being jammed packed with people.

Little boy having a good time


There was a swarm of these white birds on that island


Cat wants to go mainland to look for boyfriend


"boat" boy said only about 10 people then, so not so bad. Reaching there, there were still a few shelters that were not taken, so we had some choices. The air was feeling very cold and we were all quite worried as we didn't came quite prepared for spending a freezing night here. But we finally settled beside a malay family near to the end of the rakit, where the awning could be rolled down to give some measure of shield from the cold wind.

Row of rods


They had completed the extension on the far end, so the rakit was now a little bigger with more fishing space. But later on in the night, more people came. I thought there were like about 50 pax on that small platform.

Proof that TC rod also can get fish


Plenty of these. Hmm..in fact, only these


Alamak, missed the hook again


I started with jigging, but nope it was not a tambanful session. Walked around the rakit, nothing was biting. A was the first to land some big eye herrings, which were like the only fish that everyone was getting. TC and friend, Ho too got some. Some were used as baits with our bottom rig. But it was largely unsuccessful. Nothing seemed to be biting except for the one time when TC bait came back up half bodied.

Quite scenic to be luring from here


Yikes, where my L-minnow?


But in the night, there were times that the water current was slow and I could see plentiful of surface activity. There were like splashes every once a while, and I saw visually some oval shaped fishes which I suspect were big eye travellies. I also saw a ribbon swimming past on the surface. I started squidding to check for squids, but lost my Yamashita due to a snag below. Since I couldn't quite sleep due to all the ciggie smoke and mp3 phone music, I was mainly luring throughout the night. But tried as I might, nothing was biting my "super" minnow. There was only 1 solid bite but it missed the hook. I next changed to L-minnow, but that was lost after one cast when it came back with a leaf, missing the lure. It was the darn snap that I was using. I next tried the pinny which was more successful. There were like 4-5 strikes, but alas, all missing the hook.

One of my only catch. Big eye herring


Loot for the trip. Mostly caught by TC and Ho


This trip was quite uncomfortable due to the crowd, especially when start chain smoking and blasting mak yoyo music. Add on to the cold, and the discomfort of not being able to wash hands, the trip was not that pleasant. But A and D managed to catch some shuteyes, thankfully.

Morning waters. Looked good actually but I was too tired to fish


Morning broke and we all packed rather quickly, eager to go back to some civilised living. I supposed that the trip would have been better if we were better prepared, and not go during the weekends. The crowd made the fishing just like doing it at bedok jetty. There were rows of rods, and casting was quite a challenged affair. I really couldn't stand all the smoke, particulary the malaysia brand of pungent ciggies. For these people, fishing and smoking had to go together somehow.

But my assessment was that the place was ideal for luring. There were very few places that you could be looking out at the calm sea, and see all the splashes of fishes all around. It was almost a luxury and at some corners, very pictureque. It was probably just my poor technique and luck that I couldn't get anything. Definitely worth another try in the future.

My friend


Our corner (with the awning)


The new extension


Don't leave home without these