My last offshore fishing trip of 2012 (18-19 July)

Yes, for the same reason that travelling via plane will not be something that I will be doing for the next few months, I have just hung up my fishing gear for the rest of the year. It is very hard to put aside something that one loves so much (and I've just acquired an ice box from Carrefour the last weekend!) but time and circumstances dictate otherwise. I'm going to miss the sparkling blue of the sea, the wait with the rod in hand, the lapping of the waves....

And of course, the thrill of a great hook-up Anyway I wanted to blog about this trip not only because it is the last fishing trip for me this year but also because of a very unusual hook-up I had this trip.

Now you might be thinking - a greasy grouper! What's the big deal? But let me tell ya, I caught this table-sized grouper on sabiki size 8 hooks! Here's the evidence below, you can see the sabiki rig and my friend's Size 12 sandal next to the grouper (to give an indication of its size). The grouper was chasing the smaller fishes that usually takes the sabiki bait and in biting its prey, it got hooked too! From the two other hooks stuck in its body, it might have tried to escape but well, with 3 sabiki hooks in it, its day of reckoning has come.

Now, this trip was a far cry from the previous trip on this boatman's boat where we had a massive haul. I guess I should have known when he said that it was sotong season but I didn't expect that the bottom fishing would be so bad with the abundance of sotong eating the prawns. The school of tenggiri which we had hunted 2 months back had dispersed according to the boatman and so back to bottom fishing we went.

Now, I have to confess that although a squid has absolutely no fight when it is caught, I still enjoy that tug on the my jig when I am casting and retrieving, casting and retrieving. The pull by the sotong on the jig never fails to take me my surprise as I am retrieving line and then it's come to Mama time as I reel in the sorry greedy squid.

We caught a sackload of squids this trip - I think I caught about 11 pieces altogether on the first day and another 10 pieces on the second day. It would have been great if I ate sotong but that's the one seafood that I absolutely detest!

Thankfully, the other anglers on board managed to catch other fishes such as a large chermin. We saw lots of leather jackets at the surface nibbling away at our baits on the sabiki but no matter which size sabiki hooks we used, we failed to hook up the leather jackets. It was frustrating to watch them take the bait and even follow it all the way up close to the surface. The boatman said it was because their mouths were too hard for us to set hook.

We had dinner at a different restaurant this fishing trip instead of our usual Restaurant Rompin Bahru. The reason is of course the proximity of this new restaurant to the jetty and our chalet. The boatman and 1 other angler caught a red grouper which we cooked with the chermin. And of course lots of deep fried squid.

This was our haul to be split from the two days of fishing after us having eaten most of the good fishes over 2 dinners. The very red fish on the right was what I had caught on sabiki too. It's in my freezer now waiting to be cooked by yours truly! And yeah, we pretty much wiped out the ang kor li clan (left of picture).

I am proud to say I caught the most of the ang kor li on board the boat - not so much by luck but by pure diligence. When we hit the ang kor li spot, I changed to a sabiki rig (large size hooks) and put prawn heads/tails on the hooks before lowering the same to the bottom and just waiting. Always the pull, the ugly bend of the rod, and then me reeling it to bring up at least 2 ang kor li at a time. Then the reaching for the pliers to shake off the fishes into a pail, and then setting my rig again before lowering it to catch more.

My friend used some of my ang kor li to go after Tenggiri/Sail Fish or I would have more to show for the trip. The other angler holding the chermin also went after bigger game but someone has got to go after the smaller fishes and ang kor li makes for great eating! My mum fried some of the ang kor lis with tumeric powder and it was all just delicious!

Fishing - Mersing Tragedy and Nenasi Fishing on 14 Aug 2010

I've stopped fishing offshore since the middle of August last year - we couldn't make it for the last offshore trip for the year which was scheduled on my CEB's birthday in October because we were in Phuket holidaying. And then there were no further offshore fishing trips arranged because most of the weekend slots in Nov had been booked by others targeting sailfish and it was also the monsoon season (late Nov to Feb).

I have had fishing trips cancelled because the boatman refused to go out to sea due to the choppy weather, and that wasn't even during the monsoon season. So it was with great sadness that I read about the deaths of 4 Singaporeans who drowned when the boat they were in capsized off Mersing where they had gone for a fishing trip this month. To compound matters, there were insufficient life jackets on board and the boat was loaded past capacity. Talk about sheer irresponsibility on the part of the boatman. May their souls rest in peace. The sea is an unforgiving master, and seeks to exact its toll on those who take from it.

And that is what I intend to do in a couple of days time. Like the past 2 years where I welcome the new year abroad, this year I will not be in Singapore again. Well, at least not on the island. We are going fishing (Singapore waters) and will be on a boat to catch the fireworks before heading for the wreck to get some monster groupers ("gaos"). More fun, chicken wings and beer than serious fishing, according to my fishing kaki who was the organiser of my last offshore fishing trip of 2010 in Nenasi. Yup, the picture below shows my first catch on that fishing trip. A bright chermin. Caught it on the bradmis which has brought me incredible luck this year and a wide variety of fishes. The fight was thrilling but too short - I wasn't targetting chermins this size but GTs so this fish was no match at all for my 40lbs leader.

I caught a couple of greasy groupers but they were only 2kg+ each which meant no one scrambled to take any photos at all. And I left my trusty Sony Ericsson behind which was a huge mistake because to get photos from pp generally is a tough process. The rest of the fishing trip was rather quiet for those who were doing bottom fishing so I switched to jigging for squids. It was sotong season besides. With the triangle technique I'd learnt from my fishing shifu, I landed about 7 sotongs in all - the first one fell off the barbed end of the cheap jig while waiting for my CEB to go get the camera. So i changed jig and after 3 casts, I landed this decent sized sotong which ended up as bait for those bottom fishing.

So although I don't eat sotongs and one doesn't really pay good money to go squidding on an offshore trip, I spent about 2 hours jigging for squids - cast retrieve in triangle fashion until one feels a tug, then the dead weight at the end of the line which means either a catch or....a lost jig (sungkot)...nothing beats the thrill of fishing and wondering what the hell is on the other end.

Well anyway, after realising that most of my sotongs had been butchered by the anglers on board to be used as bait (their prawns weren't working), I decided to go after my dream catch. Yeah, it's nothing much - a parrot fish. It helps that the meat of a parrot fish is even more tender/delicious than a normal greasy grouper of course, but no, I chase the parrot fish not for its meat but because I've never had the luck to land one.

See this beauty I'm holding? It isn't mine. There I was using the same bait (prawns) as the guy on the other side of the boat who was using a handline and this 4kg+ parrot fish took his bait and not mine. He let me pose with a picture of his fish (which he packed back to HKG) - only the borga used to grip its mouth, and the bradmis behind in the picture belong to me. And that is the thing about fishing - it reminds me that as in life, there are many things beyond our control and sheer will (or force of will) is insufficient - there are many times when we have to surrender to a higher power/forces greater than us. May the good Lord deem it fit to bless me with a parrot fish and many other fishes in the coming 2011!

Eating everything I've caught at a go - Ebek, Sotong and Prawns

If anyone wondered what happened to the large GT that I caught (click here for the catch report), it has become the bane of my fishing existence. I'm not kidding. My mum has found a way to punish me for the loads of fish I bring home and stack in her freezer past midnight - like a Santa Claus with a sack of wet smelly fishes. No matter how late it is, I clean up as best as I can, quite fearful of my mother's wrath. But there is no escaping - she has been complaining that she is sick and tired of eating fish. At first, I could not understand, my mind failed entirely to comprehend how any human being could possibly be tired of this wonderous gift that God had given to mankind - fish! And then, my mother started to feed me fish every single day and on the weekends, fish for both lunch and dinner until, thick as my skull may be, I am enlightened as to why my fellow anglers give away their catches quite willingly!

The first fish that my mother cooked was the GT/Ebek in curry. This is a close up pic of one quarter of the fish (head portion) chopped up and cooked with coconut curry. After having cooked the cobia, tripletail and parrotfish to date, my mum likes the Ebek best. And it is indeed delicious - and guess what - it isn't for sale in Singapore or even JB markets - oh well, even if it was, my freezer is quite stuffed with Ebek meat still.

My mum also took it upon herself to cook the sotongs which I'd caught earlier (click here for the catch report) but since I absolutely detest the taste of squid, I didn't have any of it. It's strange why I like catching sotong even though I don't eat the same - sotongs never put up much of a fight either - it's just a dead weight at the end of the jig. And the mess they make! I just bought a squid jig for RM 44 and it's going to be my deadliest weapon in the squid killer arsenal when I go eging again with my fishing shifu - the weapon of last resort. The last fishing trip at Rompin, I had no problems landing 2 sotongs on a SGD 4 orange (that's the color to use at Rompin) jig but because the set up was different (a very heavy weight was used), jigging got too tiring for me and I went back to just bottom fishing.

But I digress - my mother, in addition to both the fish and squid, also cooked the rest of the prawns which I'd caught in my earlier prawning/prawn fishing forrays. Gosh, it has been some time since I've felt the urge to go prawn fishing but even if I get struck by the urge, my mother's method of making me eat all my catches is quite a deterrent indeed. Bah.

And here is a pic of my mum's cooking for dinner - all the different categories of catches (fish, prawns and squids) at a go including a pork meat dish and a veg dish.

I love my mother and her cooking but I do say - anyone wants any fishes? I'll keep you in mind the next time I go fishing!

Eging / Squid Fishing - my squid jig is ruined!

I have come to the realisation that squid fishing / egining ranks way below fish fishing and prawn fishing. Like the previous experience that I had, it was difficult to find any takers for the squids and my haul back home was met with even more resistance by my mum than if I had brought back fish (the scaling!) and prawns (the snipping of the feelers). Remembering the nasty experience I had the first time washing the squids in the kitchen bathroom, I decided to wash the squids at my pool area instead. Here is a pic of the 5 squids that we caught with most of the squid ink washed away.

The one on the extreme right of the pic above looks to be the one which destroyed my favourite/lucky squid jig! It was a nightmare getting the jig out (I had to use pliers) and I think one of the eyes got twisted around. Ugh! When I got the squid (after 1 hour of casting and retrieving), I was over the moon with delight. I thought the squid had squirted out most of its ink when I brought it close to shore as it was squirting ink in the water, but when I landed it, it squirted out even more ink and stained my squid jig!

The jig was supposed to be luminous, with a blue back and pink sides (see a close up of it by clicking here)! But look at how it has been stained irreparably in the pic above! Argh! My shifu said that the jig could still be used but given how hard it is to land a squid (after 1 hour, 1 squid but maybe that's because my shifu wiped most of them out over the past week) I think I have got to go out and buy more of these jigs! Argh!

Eging / squid fishing with a squid jig

I was introduced to eging (Squid fishing with a squid jig) by my fishing shifu. The first time I tried eging was at an island off Mersing where we stood waist deep in the water casting and retrieving the squid jigs for about 4 hours. I didn't catch anything (erm, which was quite depressing) while my shifu caught about 8-9 pieces in all. So, one night this month where we were fishing at our secret spot and he had suggested baiting (to my surprise but he being the expert would know what fishes take lures) and a sotong took my bait TWICE. Despite my best efforts to bring in the sotong (the second attempt we saw the white body of the sotong rise to the surface), because I was using a single hook (with a prawn attached), there was no way to set hook deep enough to bring the sotong in. My shifu told me not to waste time trying to get sotong with the setup.

So, the next weekend when we went there, we brought some squid jigs. My shifu landed 6 pieces in succession after his first fish (he caught that using another method (not using a net of course)) and I, as usual, came up empty. My shifu taught me how to work the squid jig (the triangle method) and although after about an hour where I alternated between despair and hopelessness, I just kept at it, remembering the 10,000 hour rule. AND, then on my Xth no of cast and retrieve, I felt the jig get stuck at the buttom on the way back. For a moment I thought that my jig had sungkot again (stuck in/on the rocks at the bottom). I pulled harder and the "stuck feeling" disappeared but my rod (soft tip) was still bent with the weight of...something.

Totally excited, everything I knew about fishing left me and I was yanking upwards on my rod like a fool as if that would bring the sotong to surface - can you believe it, I forgot to work the reel! It was only like a full minute later that I realised what I should have been doing and reeled the sotong in and landed it! Here's a pic of my first sotong caught on a squid jig.

The squid jig that landed me this beauty is a yo-zuri squid jig size 3.5. It cost RM 20 (about SGD 8) - well worth every cent! I had learnt from previous fishing trips and all that one should always change jigs and I had changed between 3-4 cheaper (exori and surecatch brands) and smaller (size 2.5 to 3) jigs before opening up this yo-zuri one. My shifu told me that even the SGD 2 squid jigs work well enough to catch these sotongs but I guess he must have forgotten I don't have the level of skill that he has! In the hands of a master, miracles happen. In my hands, I need the best I can afford to get unfortunately. Here is a close up picture of the beauty, note the green eyes (why do squids have green large eyes - scary!) and the tentacles which are used to grasp its prey and pull it towards the mouth ( a beak which can give you a v painful peck so I read.)
My shifu returned after that from where he had gone to and we went to another area to fish. He hooked a todak but because of the shape of the mouth, it was impossible to land the todak (we were more than 4ms above the water level). My shifu gave me all the catch of the night which I swear, was a nightmare in all sense of the word. The squids/sotongs had so much black ink that the pail I put them in was stained black and when I put them in the kitchen toilet to wash them before I could put them in the sink, all the squid ink made such a mess of the walls and floor! I had to clean the walls and floors after that! Here is a picture of the catch for the night! My shifu told me the next night he returned and wiped out even more of the sotong clan - more than half a kilo worth of sotongs!