Sunday, January 20, 2008

My very 1st Prawn Fishing

The Hunt for Giant Freshwater Prawn


The tired Giant prawn after a good fight


Date: 18th Jan 2008
Venue: Bottle Tree Park
Time: 9:30-12:00 noon

I have never done Prawn Fishing before but after this trip with Darren and LuCong who are my Prawn fishing guide, it seems to be quite fun after all comparing to fish-fishing.The main challenge of prawn fishing is the tackle used. All you need is just the Prawn rod and for this type of rod, the rod tip is really fine and thin comparing to fishing rod which is much thicker at the rod tip. In order to know if the prawn is feeding on your bait, one can easily tell it from looking at the float movement and immediately follow with a strike to set the hook. When a big freshwater prawn was caught, it will give you a really good fight and landing it needs some technique. Frankly speaking, bring up the prawn is not that simple at all and getting it in big quantity within a limited time frame need some technique and skill and of course luck played a part as well. The strength to counter the resistance of the prawn must not be too strong or too light as either one will ended up losing your catch. Lu Cong who had did his prawn fishing 2 weeks ago had caught around 70 over pieces within 2.5hrs which is tremendously good result for himself. However, this time round his catch rate is less than half of what he had caught previously. The main reason for the poor result is mainly due to the hot weather which resulted of the prawn's poor appetite. At the end of our 2.5hr time frame, out total catch is around 70 pieces for the 3 of us which i personally felt it is already good enough. After the Prawn Fishing trip, i ended up going down to Beach Road to purchase my SGD$30 7ft Prawn Fishing rod and accessories...Hohohoooo, another one more tackle added into my collection.


Beautiful male Prawn


My first Prawn caught


A good fight with this Giant


LuCong with his catch


Another one caught


A good sized Prawn for dinner


My kakis on Prawn fishing


Is this enough for you?

Thursday, January 17, 2008

The Opening offshore trip in Yr 2008

First Punggol Offshore Trip with Ah Koh Boat
Date:16th Jan 2008 (Wednesday)
Chinese Calender: 十二月初九

Tide:
16Jan08 0416 2.8
16Jan08 1037 1.1
16Jan08 1648 2.5
16Jan08 2233 1.3

My 1st offshore in 2008 and the weather was perfectly good and the folks on board was superb. Everyone on this trip manage to land up some fishes. Kelvin landed the first ray of the day and he is indeed one funny guy who really made our day. The couple, Desley and Daphne had a busy day landing the Gelama and Crimson Snapper aka "Red Chicken". Sulin, who was pretty lucky on this trip managed to catch a big Gu-hook, John Snapper and a big catfish at the same spot within half an hour. Winson also caught a decent size John Snapper and a few Gelama but was sort of busy on his mobile due to his work. CiCi also caught a big Ah Seng which had given him a good fight. Michael caught a few Gelama as well. As for me, the first half of the day was not my day landing a few small fishes and only at around 4pm, i finally had some action. As i'm using my light bait-casting setup it was quite a tiring fight. My 25lbs mono line was peeling off from my Abu 4500CS Pro-Rocket and my Shakespear Contender rod was illustrating a Alphabet 'C' during the fight. It was not a comfortable fight as my rod butt was too short and positioning the rod and reeling the fish back was not a simple job. Luckily, after roughly 10-15minutes of "Tug of war", the big prata surrendered to me. Ah Koh, the boatman landed a 1kg plus Gu-hook using "Sarong worm" which he emphasized that it is very much better than using live prawns.

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with my first offshore trip in 2008 and hoping that i will have better luck to land some big fish on my next offshore trip.




Nice view at Punggol Marina




Happy Anglers Gathering



Preparing the deadly bait for Snapper



One-two-three ..say cheers!




Hey look, i landed my first fish



Another fish for Kelvin



Arrh..Oh no...i got a "Sangkot" fish




1st half of the day catch



A good fight with this ray




Desley with his "Red Chicken"




The "Ang Kuei" couple



Cici with his Ah Seng



Kelvin with "Jaws"



Ah Koh landed his big Gu-hook



Ah Koh's boat



All our catch for this trip