Last weekend (19 Jan), a group of my fishing buddies decided to explore a shrimp farm in West Malaysia in a sleepy little village called Sitiawan in the state of Perak. Sitiwan is located about a 45min drive to the South West of Ipoh, very close to the resort island of Pangkor. It seems that one of the shrimp farm was disused and the owners decided to open it up for fishing. The large pond is now leased by a local tackle shop called Lure Haven, and stocked with Cobia, Barramundi (for the American readers, this is an Asian cousin of the American Snook and fights similarly with lots of aerial acrobatics), Giant Trevally, Grouper and several other species.

Sitiawan is about 8 hours by luxurious coach from Singapore and the journey started on Friday night so that no daylight was lost for work or fishing. Fishing began right on Saturday morning and continued for 2 days before boarding the night coach for Singapore and reaching Singapore early Monday morning, just in time for work! Talk about efficiency!

The fishing was reported to be quite hot with smaller giant trevallys landed on a regular basis. Fly fishing was a little tougher, with the Barramundi’s being a little shy, prefering small crazy charlies to larger clousers, pink things and whistlers. A couple of Cobia were caught as well as a good size Grouper.

The pond is kept very clean and healthy with good clear water. The water were constantly aerated with a rotating wheel and pump to ensure

a constant supply of oxygen to keep the fish active. The weather can get pretty hot in this region and fishes can be lethargic if the oxygen levels are low and the water is dirty.

The fishing was pretty similar on the second day. This fishing spot would be ideal for anglers new to fly fishing to test their skills at wielding the fly rod as there are lots of casting space and ample room for the backcast. However, the lack of trees to get in the way also means it can get really, really hot in the mid-day sun!

All fishes caught were released to fight another day!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

As we begin the new year 2008, we want to set new records both for quantity and size of fish caught. I’ll definitely try to make my annual “pilgramage” to Maldives, definitely one of the hottest saltwater fishing spots on planet earth! Our trip in May of 2007 resulted in possibly the most fly caught bonefish on a fishing trip in the Maldives. In 5 days of fishing, we landed almost 100 bonefish. The most bonefish caught by a single angler in a single day was 9.

However the highlight of the May 2007 trip has to be the largest GT caught on fly. This is a hefty 22kg monster caught by Henry Lau of Coho flyshop, on a 8wt rod in 4 foot of water from the shore. It took a little size 4 Crazy Charlie meant for bonefish. The GT took out backing like it was on steroids and we managed to get the little skiff to Henry on time to help give chase. The fish took him and the skiff a kilometer from the shore before it was landed after one solid hour of sweat. Here is a picture of this awesome fish!

We will be be trying our best to break the record both for quantity and size of fish this 2008!

Wish us luck!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

“Fly-in” fishing for giant trout is what most people can only dream about and a few fortunate ones get to do. But when flying a plane or a chopper is part of your profession, this becomes part of your job! My buddy Sean is one of those fortunate ones!

Sean, who is a pilot, shuttles between NZ and Singapore on a regular basis. What a job! Shuttling between two different paradise (Business paradise and fishing paradise). In any case, Sean wrote back about his awesome trip just two days ago with some pictures to prove that this wasn’t just one of his fantasies in the middle of the night.

Here is an excerpt of what Sean wrote in his email :

—————————————————————————————–

Up early this morning 0430hrs to prepare the aircraft. It is another beautiful summer day here of 17ºC. It started off a bit cloudy as seen in the attached pictures. It cleared up in the late morning to be a perfect dry fly ONLY fishing day.

Yesterday I mentioned about our intention of chasing these rainbow in this ” private property ” and here we are! We have the whole place to ourselves.

I landed 10 rainbow trout today, all dry fly action; they took Royal Wulff, Blow Bottle and Red Humpy. Awesome fishing! All visual sight casting! They were not big fish but hard fighting silver bullets! Sighting them was half the fun already and to sweeten it, present a dry fly first time on target and you will surely be rewarded.

The rod I was using was my 6wt Winston LT!! The wind was light; the river condition was perfect and a sunny day to give away the fish position. You can see their “greenish back” or a moving shadow. It was total enjoyment with the LT playing these rainbows in fast running waters.

The second day was another hard working day… . The awesome fishing on this river goes on the whole day. We hiked another 11 km upstream today. Note how clear it was and a lot of “holding waters” for the fish. This is a classic rainbow trout river!! I have my “Yu” (Fish) for the New Year! (My good friend Black Fish on this email list, sorry no “Yu Sheng” for you, I am not taking one of those trout back to you on Chinese New Year! ) I will be happy to buy you one from Market Place.

Tomorrow, we are planning another “reconnaissance” trip to a closely guarded trophy brown trout river. I had landed 15 browns there in a day before, and all were big.

If we find them there tomorrow, they will be big. Only way in is by air! So it is very remote, and very much protected from other anglers.  It all depends on river condition and after that it is another 10km walk each way to work upstream and back to the airstrip. It’s all part of a day’s work here!

I have no idea if they will be there, but I will certainly be delighted to update you again tomorrow.

——————————————————————————————

You can see more of the pictures in the slide show here

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Happy New Year!

This the first day of 2008 and I decided I would somehow find something interesting to contribute on this first day of another exciting year. Well, what an understatement that turned out to be!

Turned out, I was invited to witness some of the hottest fishing I’ve ever seen on the shores of Singapore. The invitation was made on the eve of a New Year’s day party and I was thinking about turning it down, half in expectation of a long and late night out. Was I glad I accepted the invitation!

I met Hock and a few of his buddies at Changi point at 5.45am from where we had a quick breakfast and made our way in his trusty Landrover Defender and Ron’s (of Lure Haven) Nissan X-Trial. My first thought was, “What an overkill!”, until I saw the kind of terrain ahead of us. With the rainy season, puddles of mud and murky water were everywhere. Together with the darkness of dawn, I actually felt very assured in the Landrover, having been accustomed to its capabilities in my army days! If you don’t have a 4 wheel drive vehicle, your chances of making it in and out of the place will be drastically reduced.

The place is a little finger pier, about 1km long, just next to the Changi Expo (see satellite map). When we reached the place at about six, a group of about 10 anglers were already there. Rods were quickly assembled, anticipating fast and furious action on the sunrise. Entrance to the place wasn’t easy. Some of the entrances had barriers over them while some had guards in place. This was where 4 wheel drive vehicle had a major advantage as they could go through any opening in the unpaved ground without so much as a cause for concern.

This little pier was almost ideal, acting as a wind shelter against the strong NE Monsoon winds, which were just starting to pick up. Outside the barrier, white caps caused by the 10knots wind were building while inside the barrier, the water was a beautiful calm, only broken once in a while by a ripple caused by an escaping gust.

Video 1 - Acrobatic Queenfish in action!

After a little warm up, the action started at about 7am with the first hit. This followed almost immediately (within a minute) by another and another and soon, everything was total chaos with shouts and screams everywhere!

Well, instead of spending too much time trying to describe everything in words, I’ll just let my pictures and videos do the talking. Suffice it is to say that I witnessed some of the best surface action and aerial acrobatics display by a lively group of queenfish I’ve seen in a long time. Double and triple hookups were the order of the morning and they happened all over the place. Never had I been so busy with my camera instead of my rods.

Video 2 - Watch how the big one was landed!

Biggest fish of the day was a 6kg “monster” which took the metal jig just about 10 meters from the shore taking angler and “spectators” by surprise. Queenfish are an aggressive lot, prefering surface lure and poppers to conventional lures. While the hook up chances were lower due to faster retrieves and poppers and jigs bouncing off the water, I personally prefer surface fishing as the visual impact of a surface take is always an awesome spectacle to witness! There were countless misses but still, almost every angler ended up with at least one fish each (with the most being 3 per angler).

Well, all good things do ultimately come to an end. The “window of opportunity” was from sunrise (about 6.30am) to about 8am and thereafter, the action slows down to a trickle with the occassional catch every 15-20 mins or so. By 9.30am, the fishing boats started coming in and we decided it was time to call it a day… what an exciting morning on the first day of the New Year!

Video 3 - See Double Hook-up action below!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites