Punggol Prawn Fishing and Geylang Prawn Noodles

After work yesterday, I decided to go check out Punggol Prawn Fishing at Punggol Marina Club. However, I took a slight detour along the way and drove to the end of the road instead which lead me to Punggol Jetty. There were a couple of old men and a group of young boys fishing at the jetty. Peered into their buckets and saw that they had caught really small fishes. One of the old men told me that these were caught using cast-nets. There were also some people shore fishing from the beach but as the weather had taken a turn for the worst, they started to pack up before the thunderstorm. According to the old men, this place doesn't have much fish (like all the licensed areas in Singapore) but I'm glad to have found a lovely place to practice casting with my Shimano Calais reel.

I parked my car along the road leading to the country club (at least the parking is free) and walked in, in the thunderstorm. Although there were a couple of signs pointing to the prawn fishing area (the signs were in the lobby and out of the pier), I could not find the place the first time - maybe it was because of the rain, wind and lack of light. Anyway, the prawn fishing place is located near Pier 1. There are 2 means of access - one through the carpark and the other through the boardwalk along the water edge. As usual, I did not pay to start prawning immediately but sat around watching the bite-rates and the folks prawning. This is a picture of the prawning place at Punggol Marina which consists of three small ponds laid back to back (each pond is the same size).

The Slog Reviews:1/10. Using Ebi Culture (please click here)as a yardstick, punggol prawning, despite its impressive website fails miserably to impress in terms of facilities, prawn size, bite-rates, catch-rates, crowd, service of the staff and rods provided. The ponds are awfully small as you can see from the picture, the prawns caught were NOTHING like that caught from Ebi Culture (see my previous post) but were really small-sized (smaller than one's hand generally) and after sitting there for a good half an hour just watching, most people there failed to catch many prawns (at best, 2 prawns per half hour per rod for one lucky person). The guy in my picture bending over was so desperate to catch prawns that he squatted down and dragged his line up and down but in the end, caught zilch. The man in blue caught only 1 prawn in half an hour and the lady in black who was smoking with a little child nearby, caught nothing. The counter appeared to be manned by a couple in their 30s-40s and a foreign worker. Unlike Ebi Culture, they displayed no interest in engaging their customers personally or even tempting visitors like me sitting there to shell out some $ to prawn. Not outside food and drink allowed on the premises which I can understand but the selection of drinks and food there is very limited. And the rods for rent were cheap thin things - nothing like the sort provided by Ebi Culture. I messaged my prawning kaki about the place and he replied that he had heard how lousy punggol prawning place was too. I'm not wasting S$30 at that place.

Anyway, on the way home, I stopped by Geylang Prawn Noodle at 325 Upper Paya Lebar Road for dinner. It took me quite a while to find the place although I have been to the place several times. It is located along How Son Rd behind a bus stop and parking in front of the row of shops (albeit limited lots) is free. I ordered the 2 in 1 prawn kway teoh soup (2 in 1 means prawns and pcs of meat) which cost SGD 5. The Slog Reviews: 8/10. A bit pricy for the amount one gets but the stocky yet not stalty taste of the soup and freshness of the prawns make up for that. There are also origami type paper on the table which one can and should use to put the prawn shells as opposed to leaving it on the table.