CR 27 Nov 2006 at West Side

Finally my drinking buddy, Jimmy is able to take a short break after his 2nd baby girl is born. It has been more than 3 months since we got together. So one week before, he has been trying to organise a fishing trip together.

I met up at his place at 6.30am. Then we took his double cab to pick up the rest of the kakis. One in Bedok, then Tampines, then Changi to get our live bait (1kg prawns) and then Teck Whye to fetch the last kaki.

We reached our destination at about 9am. I was quite shack initially as I only slept for 3 hours since I wanted to watch the Man U vs Chelsea match.

Once we reached the pick up area, we saw our boatman came in a small boat, almost like a sampan. I tot, WTH??!!??

Then realised it was just to ferry us to the actual fishing boat. Sigh! The fishing boat was quite spacious. Though not as luxurious as my other trips before but it is a basic fishing boat. The boatman is quite senior, looks like 60+ to me. Have been fishing his whole life from the time Singapore was still a fishing port.

This is how the boat looks like:



The day started on a quiet note. Fishing spots are somewhere around Tuas and Jurong Island. Went to first 2 stops, no bite at all. Only at the 3rd spot, then one of the kaki caught this 1kg Guhood on handline.

Then it was quiet all the way. Rain started at about 3+pm. It was quite disappointing. As I started to reel in to check my bait, One of my kaki, Louis, saw a live sotong attached to my bait. So we scooped the bugger up and tot maybe can try changing from live prawn to sotong to see if it helps. So I hooked on the live sotong onto my Shimano TLD30 and then released to bottom. Within a minute, my rod started tapping! Immediately I rushed to it and started reeling back! It felt heavy! What a surprise when it came up! A nice size grouper. The weight is confirmed at 2.2kg.

With that, it got everyone excited! And we started to be on our attention. Soon after I got another take on my other Shimano 8000. It wasn't as heavy as the first but it felt good to catch something again. Up came another smaller grouper, weight is slightly less than 1kg. But this time it was on live prawns. Jimmy was mentioning that the water is warming up thus the fish is starting to feed.

Within another 5 mins, I got another take, This time it felt fierce, the fish was darting everywhere. In my mind, could it be a Diamond Trevally? I was hoping for one. However, up came a nice Parrotfish. The biggest I've caught so far. In fact the grouper was also the biggest I've caught so far. The weight is about 1kg

Thus this concludes the action for the trip. Louis was cursing and swearing cos the whole time he was in between my 2 rods, only about 0.5m away. But my 2 rods kept gettting hookup and he didn't.

So it is true to say that fishing is 70% luck and 30% skill. And I guess I was the luckiest one that day!

Overall the trip was not as good as I expected however, I had the most catch so no complains.

Can't wait for the next trip. I believe Southern Islands may be more productive, so will try to orgnanise one there.

That's it for now.