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Fishing in a Shrimp Farm in Malaysia?
Filed Under (General, Saltwater) by seetch on 26-01-2008
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!
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HI Seet,
i’ve not met you yet, but we prob have a bunch of mutual friends in the fishing community! hopefully we’ll get a chance to do so! BTW, great blog! The above photos from sitiawan were taken by me, and passed onto Mah with my permission.
For the photographers, heres abit more info! Pics were taken by the latest sony alpha 700, with Sony 50mm F1.4G and 16-80mm Carl Zeiss lenses. Really a lovely camera system! FIll in from on board camera flash used.
Drop me an email, i’d love to share some of my other fishing pics on picasa web albums!
with warm regards and a fantastic lunar new year to all!
David
First great pictures and thanks for sharing them. You have me doing some air casting as I viewed your pics. My husband and I are fly fishers from the US and we are looking for some places to do some freshwater fly fishing here. Normally prefer to fish in a river but this shrimp farm in Sitiawan looks very interesting. We are currently living in Taiping, Perak so this place looks very doable for a day trip from Taiping. Can you please give me some direction o n how to get there and any other information that you might have on this place, like rod fees for the day, suitable flies etc. I tie my own flies and have some fly tying materials with me. Any other information on fishing places in Perak would be most appreciated. Look forward to hearing back from you soon.
Thank you
Mei Leng
Hi there. Great article and great pix. The pond in Sitiawan sounds really interesting. Can you please let me have directions and address? Or better still, where can I get the bus to go there?
Many thanks