The goldsinny wrasse are in!

I spent a full day on Wednesday over on the west coast, fishing at a couple of spots, the first in Gourock and the second in Greenock. A few tompot blenny have been caught at both these marks over the last few months, so I went to see if I could get lucky and catch one myself. Fishing small sections of ragworm close in amongst the rocks and weed, I caught lots of fish on my trusty Rock Rover. Quite predictably though, it was very difficult to get through the local wrasse, the goldsinny in particular being present in very large numbers, although there were also some corkwing in amongst them.

I must have caught over fifty goldsinny wrasse throughout the session.

A few anglers along from me were catching reasonable amounts of mackerel on feathers, so I decided to catch some myself. I set up my second, longer, but still very light rod and clipped on a 15g metal jig in a “rainbow kandy” pattern. Whacking it out, jigging it up through the water column and fishing it on the drop did the trick nicely and my first mackerel of the year were soon caught and released, free to again run the gauntlet of multiple sets of feathers being ripped past them.

The three hooks on the jig were overkill for mackerel. I probably should have taken two off but unbelievably all the fish were cleanly hooked in the mouth and shaken off to minimise handling. After catching half a dozen, I returned my attention to fishing close in to target a tompot blenny again.

The biggest of the mackerel I caught. Great fun on a super light rod. The average Scottish east coast mackerel seems to be bigger than those on the west for some reason. 

Before deciding to drive through for the day, I'd been chatting with a local angler who'd caught a tompot blenny recently, and he pooped down to fish alongside me for an hour in the afternoon. Andrew, who loves light rock fishing, was using an even lighter setup than I was and as we chatted away he caught a few wrasse on Isome. Not long after play time was over and he’d went back to his work, I headed along to the second spot after a short break to have something to eat. The fishing there was pretty slow and to begin with all I caught were a few more goldsinny wrasse. After a while I moved to try a second spot at the same venue and this produced a couple of common dragonet and a dab. The first dragonet was a large male. It was very colourful but was also a bit of an old warrior with a few split fins. It had obviously lived a full life. The second dragonet was a smaller female.

My second large male dragonet this year. Coolest fish in UK waters? Definitely in the running.

The females are smaller and pretty drab by comparison.

After a few hours I ran out of ragworm just as it started to rain, so I called it a day. So, no joy tempting a “Tampot” blenny but I had still added a species to my 2023 tally with the humble mackerel. It was nice to meet and fish with Andrew if only briefly, and I think we’ll meet up again at some point. He wants to catch a butterfish and I have a spot we can try here in Edinburgh. In the meantime I think next week I'll visit Parkview Coarse Fishery again and will have yet another go at catching a Scottish barbel.

Tight lines, Scott.

My new Scottish nemesis?

Having caught a Scottish three bearded rockling earlier this year, a species I spent many years unsuccessfully targetting around Scotland, I think I might have potentially discovered my new Scottish nemesis. The barbel. I've had a few attempts over the years to catch one at various coarse fisheries in Scotland, and have failed to catch one every single time. I recently had another attempt at Parkview Coarse Fishery in Fife and failed yet again. On the bright side, I did catch my first tench of the year, on a method feeder baited with double sweetcorn and loaded with Sonubaits' Fin Perfect 2 mm pellets.

I love tench. One of my favourite UK freshwater fish species.

I also caught several bream, some also on double sweetcorn fished on a method feeder and some on triple maggot fished on a float ledger rig. For some reason I thought I'd caught bream already this year, so I didn't take any photos of those. When I got home and checked my records, it turns out they were also my first of 2023, so in one respect it was actually a successful session. I also caught, but didn't take any pictures of, dozens of tiny perch, roach, blue orfe, ide, or a hybrid either. I did take a photo of the only carp I caught. With its chunky shape it looked a little bit like an F1 carp but upon inspection after it unhooked itself in the net, it had four barbules around its mouth which F1s lack.

Just a chunky little common carp.

Another fish with four barbules was my target.

Of course, I realise that whilst fishing at coarse fisheries that have stocked them, catching a barbel is more or less just a numbers game. Apart from fishing on the bottom it’s lucky dip really and usually the numbers are heavily stacked against you. All things considered, it’s still got to be easier than catching one from the River Clyde? Surely?

Tight lines, Scott.

Recipe for success.

At the start of the month I was invited down into the Scottish Borders to fish Alemoor Reservoir by my Polish mate Tomasz, a passionate predator angler who has a membership for the venue. Recently, whilst looking at what species I could target in the second half of the year that would be additions to my 2023 species hunting challenge, I realised that I hadn’t caught a pike for many years, and when I told Tomasz about this embarrassing fact he was keen to help me remedy the situation. We arrived early in the morning and would be joined later in the day by two of Tomasz’s friends, Zibi and Lex, who were bringing a small inflatable boat and a float tube with them.

Tomasz and I spent the morning and early afternoon fishing from the bank and whilst conditions seemed good, things were pretty slow. Eventually I hooked a pike but lost it when the angry fish went airborne and threw the lure as I drew it closer to the edge through some marginal weed. After a few more hours, Tomasz had caught a couple of small pike, and we’d both caught a few small perch as well. In the afternoon I had a take from a large pike, but when I lifted into it the fish dropped the lure straight away. Knowing that a large pike was in the vicinity, Tomasz started fishing a pig shad jnr lure. After a while it was taken by a fish that initially he thought was a pike but to his surprise his lure had been swallowed whole by a rather greedy perch of 46cm, weighing almost 3lb.

A cracking, and very greedy perch!

By the time Zibi and Lex arrived, we hadn’t enjoyed any more action, and I was looking forward to exploring more of the venue from afloat. Tomasz, Zibi and I headed down the reservoir in the SIB and Lex popped his flippers on and headed out in the float tube. The three of us did some trolling as we headed down the reservoir and then fished a few different bays up one side of it. Tomasz caught a perch on a Rapala Skitter Pop Elite which he was over the moon about, and Zibi caught a small jack on a Salmo Slider. I'll be honest, by that point I didn't think I was going to get a pike but I kept trying regardless!

By about 20:00 I still hadn’t caught a pike despite over ten hours of trying. The lads were camping overnight, but I had work the next day and had to drive back to Edinburgh, so we decided to head back to our starting point so I could head off. Tomasz gave me a Salmo Executor to try, and we slowly headed back, trolling as we went. About half way there we were chatting away, not really paying attention, when my rod was suddenly pulled round. “Fish!” I shouted, completely taken by surprise. It felt like a good one, so I loosened my drag a little and took my time playing it. The last thing I wanted was to bring it in too quickly only for it to go crazy at the side of the boat and throw the lure. After five minutes of steady pressure, a few short runs and some underwater thrashing about, a lovely pike was netted by Tomasz and was quickly unhooked, measured, photographed and returned to fight another day. 

My first pike for several years was certainly worth the wait! At 101 cm this pike was probably a high double, but we didn’t weigh it. Certainly the biggest pike I’ve ever caught.

I’d have settled for a pike of any size at the beginning of the day, but was very happy to catch such a nice fish. I think Tomasz was even happier though. Or maybe he was just relieved? I know what it’s like when you’re trying to put other anglers onto fish and whilst he was clearly happy, I think he was also relieved that I’d caught a pike, which was my only goal for the day. The pressure “guiding” brings is sometimes matched by the "relief" that follows when the target species is caught. Anyway, if Tomasz were to take up guiding, I'd certainly recommend his services!

Tight lines, Scott.

Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 7.

As planned, our last day in Singapore was spent on the Southern Islands. We caught the first ferry over in the morning and whilst making our way around to the bridge linking St John’s Island to Lazarus Island I spotted some strange looking little cardinalfish and a solitary barred soapfish in a shallow area. It wasn’t too difficult to tempt the cardinalfish, but the barred soapfish wasn’t interested in my prawn and eventually it got annoyed by my efforts, and swam off into deeper water. 

This odd looking little fish is an obiculate cardinalfish. 

Soon the three of us were fishing away on the bridge, at the spot where I had caught the tomato clownfish a few days earlier and before long plenty of fish were being caught by Chris and I on small pieces of prawn. Looking north toward the mainland, the sky was very dark, and the sound of thunder could be heard off in the distance. There was no doubt that a serious amount of rain was pouring down over there. On reflection, we'd really got quite lucky in that respect, and had pretty much avoided any rain for the entire duration of our trip!

In amongst all the small wrasse and tuskfish I caught my second bluelined hind of the trip.

Casting out further produced this very cool redbreated Maori wrasse.

After a while, I decided to go see if Nemo was still hanging about in the same anemone that he had been resident in a few days previously. I didn't see him sadly, but dropping small baits into the gaps near the anemone just in case he was down there out of sight did produce lots of wrasse and tuskfish as well as a bonus fish that I was over the moon with. At first, when I lifted it up, I thought it was some kind of moray eel, but soon realised it wasn't when I got a closer look. It turned out to be my first fish from the dottyback family.

This is a carpet eel-blenny. It's not a blenny though, or an eel, it's a dottyback!

I quickly took the carpet eel-blenny over to show Chris and Lee before releasing it. We then decided to move to try a couple of spots on Lazarus Island. The first spot we tried wasn't great and after a while we moved to fish from a floating pontoon. The fishing there was very good, and I was soon catching lots of fish again. 

There were some pretty big anchor tuskfish. 

I also caught some Spanish flag snapper. A species Chris had caught on the first day of the trip. 

I also caught this nice brownback trevally. It put a good bend in my Rock Rover. 

Happily catching lots of fish, I cast out and something very big grabbed my bait. A few seconds later it had charged off, pulling my rod around. pulled a fair amount of braid from my reel before suddenly cutting me off. I was totally under gunned to catch whatever it was. That’s the chance you take when fishing with ultra light tackle! It usually happens at least once on every foreign trip. It's dissapointing but there nothing you can do really! After an hour or so on the pontoon, we headed around to two fishing platforms on the north shore of Seringat Island to try our luck there. It was very rough close in but fishing at distance produced a lot of wrasse and bream species. In amongst them, I caught a new one.

This is my first saw-jawed monocle bream. 

I also caught only my second white shouldered whiptail of the trip. The markings on this one were different to those of the first I caught.

It was mid-afternoon by this point and rather than stay put and have to walk from there all the way back around to catch the last ferry, we thought it would be wise to head back to the bridge between St John’s Island and Lazarus Island, so we weren’t so far away from the pier. Fishing there for a short while, we caught some more fish and I managed to catch two new species to add to my trip's tally. 

This was my first ever moon wrasse and...

...this little chap was my first ever bluespotted hind.

The ferry was almost due to arrive but as we walked around to the pier, Chris and I couldn't resist having a few more final casts. I caught some Kop's glass perchlet and a crested grunter, only the third species I'd caught during the trip that I'd caught before outwith Singapore. Before we called it a day, Chris wanted to catch a pink-speckled shrimpgoby, so I took him to the spot where I'd caught them earlier in the trip. We both caught a few, and they ended up being our last fish of the trip.

I'd previously caught crested grunter on both Okinawa in Japan and Jeju Island in South Korea.

The pink-speckled shrimpgoby. We both agreed they were a cool species to end the trip’s fishing with. 

In the evening, we went out for our last meal in Singapore, visiting the famous Satay Street for a selection of tasty grilled meat and shrimp skewers served with lots of satay sauce and several jugs of cold beer. We then went for a walk from there through all the skyscrapers and neon lights, along a nice quayside area, ending up in the famous Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel, where we finished the night with a Singapore Sling cocktail and some peanuts.

The Marina Bay Sands Hotel with the SkyPark Observation Deck on top of it. I guess we'll just have to return to Singapore if we want to go up there to experience the views from it.

A lovely waterside view of the Singapore skyline.

We passed through Merlion Park and its impressive fountain. The Merlion has the head of a lion and the body of a fish. It’s the mascot of Singapore. 

Eventually we made it to the Long Bar, where I treated the three of us to some very expensive but very tasty Singapore Sling cocktails. The peanuts were complimentary.

So my first full on fishing adventure in Asia had come to an end. We had all enjoyed the trip, although I think it's fair to say Chris and I had enjoyed the fishing a little more than Lee had. Fishing with lures the whole time, he had found it hard going for long periods. It was good to see him again though, and we all enjoyed the time we spent fishing together, the food in the evenings and the cold beers that went with it, and through it all had a good laugh in the process and that's what it's all about really, making great memories! 

I myself had caught plenty of fish, even if they were all relatively small, and except for only three species that I had caught before whilst in Japan and South Korea, they were all new ones I'd never caught before. 

Here's a list of the sixty seven species I caught during our week in Singapore, with the new ones in bold...

1. Anchor Tuskfish
2. Banded Archerfish
3. Barred Mudskipper
4. Bengal Sergeant
5. Bluelined Hind
6. Bluespotted Hind
7. Brownback Trevally
8. Butterfly Whiptail
9. Candystripe Cardinalfish
10. Cantor’s Gudgeon
11. Carpet Eel-Blenny
12. Chinese Damselfish
13. Chocolate Hind
14. Crested Grunter
15. Deep-Bodied Mojarra
16. Diamond Wrasse
17. Dory Snapper
18. False Scorpionfish
19. Fanbellied Filefish
20. Forest Betta
21. Freckled Goatfish
22. Giant Mudskipper
23. Goldstripe Sardinella
24. Herring Scad
25. Honey-Head Damsel
26. Indian Anchovy
27. Indo-Pacific Sergeant
28. Indochinese Spotted Barb
29. Knight Goby
30. Kops’ Glass Perchlet
31. Lagoon Shrimpgoby
32. Lattice Monocle Bream
33. Masked Shrimpgoby
34. Mayan Cichlid
35. Monogrammed Monocle Bream
36. Moon Wrasse
37. Nile Tilapia
38. Notchedfin Threadfin Bream
39. Orange Spotted Grouper
40. Orbiculate Cardinalfish
41. Oriental Sillago
42. Ornate Threadfin Bream
43. Pearly-Spotted Wrasse
44. Pink Ear Emperor
45. Pink-Speckled Shrimpgoby
46. Redbelly Yellowtail Fusilier
47. Redbreasted Maori Wrasse
48. Rib Bar Cardinalfish
49. Saddled Grunt
50. Saw-Jawed Monocle Bream
51. Seagrass Tuskfish
52. Silty Damselfish
53. Silty Wrasse
54. Silver Demoiselle
55. Silver Sillago
56. Sixbar Grouper
57. Spanish Flag Snapper
58. Spottail Needlefish
59. Spotted Archerfish
60. Stripe-nosed Halfbeak
61. Suez Pufferfish
62. Tomato Clownfish
63. Whipfin Ponyfish
64. White Shouldered Whiptail
65. Yellow-spotted Mudskipper
66. Yellowfin Snapper
67. Yellowstripe Scad

These species were also caught by Chris and Lee, but not by me...

68. Banded damselfish
69. Fringe Eyed Flathead
70. Greater Lizardfish
71. Live Sharksucker
    
72. Long Tail Tripodfish
73. Regal Demoiselle
74. Short-nosed Tripodfish
75. Sinuous Gudgeon
76. Vachelli's Glass Perchlet
77. Whitelined Cardinalfish
78. Wolf Herring
79. Yellowstripe Ponyfish

A very respectable amount of species caught between the three of us in my opinion.

I really enjoyed our trip to Singapore, but I have to be honest and say I really did not enjoy the climate in Singapore! I sweat non stop whilst there and it wasn't a pleasant experience! Would I return? Probably! There are still lots of species to catch there. Lillian has expressed an interest in visiting too, so you never know!

Tight lines, Scott.

Acknowledgments:

I'd like to thank Ken and Arthur for their advice on fishing various venues around Singapore before the trip. It helped us a lot!

I'd also like to thank Jiayuan for his help identifying some of the species I caught. Whilst I did a lot of research before I went and recognised a lot of the fish caught from that, his encyclopedic knowledge of Singaporean fish species also was invaluable.

Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 6 continued.

On our way back to the ferry pier on Pulau Ubin we walked through an area that had some nice red flowers and there were quite a few rather large, deep red dragonfly flying about. Lee managed to creep up on one and got a good photograph.

Lovely colourful flowers.

The dragonfly was a deep red colour but its wing tips were transparent. Was this an evolutionary trick to make prey think they were a butterfly or a flower perhaps? They are one of nature’s most efficient and vicious predators. 

We carried on walking back to the pier and arrived there with plenty of time to spare, so we did a spot of fishing from a small sandy beach nearby that had with some rocks on it that went out into the water. The bottom was also a mixture of sand and rock and as a result there were plenty of anchor tuskfish, seagrass tuskfish, diamond wrasse and pink ear emperor around. We also managed to pull out a couple of species that added to our tally for the trip.

We caught quite a few of these pink ear emperor.

There were a few of these aggressive little Kop’s glass perchlet in the very shallow water next to the rocks where the waves were gently breaking.

Casting out over the sandy patches produced a few silver sillago.

Before we left, we had a few last casts straight down the side of the ferry pier itself. As well as some notchfin threadfin bream and diamond wrasse I caught another new species before the ferry captain told us it was time to go.

My first white shouldered whiptail. A bonus new species just before we left Pulau Ubin.  

Soon back on the mainland we decided to have a short session fishing from a couple of sandy beaches near the ferry terminal before heading back to the hotel. These only produced a few more silver sillago, and they stopped biting once it began to get dark, but the sunset was nice.

A beautiful sunset over Pulau Ubin. 

Over dinner and beers we decided to return to the Southern Islands the following day, our last day in Singapore. It had proved to be the most productive place we had fished, and I was keen to see a little more of the Southern Islands the second time around.

Tight lines, Scott.

Click here for the final part.

Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 6.

On the penultimate day of our trip, we got a taxi out past Changi Airport and caught the first ferry from Changi Point over to Pulau Ubin, an island off the north east coast of the mainland. Our main target species for the day would be barramundi, although personally I would be targeting any species that we encountered. 

After arriving on Pulau Ubin, we headed west into the interior, making our way towards Jelutong Bridge, a well known spot to target barramundi over low water. On the way there the road crossed over a pipe that ran into a small concrete ditch on the left hand side of the road. The ditch was about a meter wide and was heavily stained a rusty orange colour. Despite the fact it didn't look very habitable, I spotted some small fish in it and quickly set up my Rock Rover. A bit of prawn on a split shot rig was dropped in, I quickly caught a few fish, and we were soon hiking again to what was supposed to be the first fishing spot!

Cantor's gudgeon was the first fish I caught from the rusty ditch.

It was followed by a few super aggressive knight goby.

Just before we left the ditch I caught a small Mayan cichlid.

The tide was out when we arrived at Jelutong Bridge, and much to my delight there were lots of mudskipper sitting out on the exposed mud! I quickly set about catching some of them. Some species were skittish and skipped away when I dropped a bit of prawn near them. Others eagerly skipped over and ate it with a ravenous appetite. Swinging them in, the first few I thought were hooked obviously weren’t, spitting the bait out before skipping off merrily back down to their holes in the mud. It was very frustrating! Chris then managed to successfully catch one which made me even more determined, so I decided to tweak my presentation slightly, tying on a slightly bigger hook, so I had more hook point exposed. When a mudskipper took the bait into its mouth I struck just a little bit harder too. This did the trick, my hook sets were much better and I quickly landed a few smaller mudskipper. There seemed to be two species that were keen on prawn and I caught them both.

My first ever species of mudskipper was the barred mudskipper.

I also caught some of these yellowspotted mudskipper.

Lee then pointed out a huge mudskipper down near the edge of the water, so I cast a piece of prawn over in its vicinity. The brute headed directly towards it, ate it straight away and I struck firmly, setting the hook. The fish "fought" pretty hard, thrashing about on the ground, but I managed to pull it up the muddy embankment. I was so excited, but when I stooped down to lift it up to unhook it, the fish thrashed about wildly and managed to unhooked itself. The sight of me trying to grab it as it made a thrashy, skippy escape must have been pretty hilarious, but it was so fast I just couldn’t grab it, and it made good its escape, entering the water and swimming rapidly along the surface, off into the mangroves, out of sight. I had a scout around but couldn’t see any more giant mudskipper so turned my attention to fishing for barramundi with Chris and Lee. After a while thrashing the water with various small hard lures, I decided to target a couple of other species that I could see swimming around in the current near the base of the bridge. The first was a species of halfbeak. There were lots of them around, and they were very easy to catch as they were all competing for the tiny baits I dropped in. Next, I targeted some small striped fish with yellow tails. Getting through the halfbeak was difficult, but eventually I managed to catch one. 

The water was full of these stripe-nosed halfbeak. Strange little fish with the oddest of mouths. The long beak is actually their bottom jaw. Their top jaw is a small flap just in front of their eyes, like a little trap door.

The other fish turned out to be banded archerfish. This family of fish have a large, upturned mouth that they use to spit water at insects to try and knock them from overhanging branches into the water so that they can eat them. How amazing is that?!

After a while there had been no sign of any barramundi, so we decided to head further west to Puaka Bridge to try there. Shortly after we arrived, Chris came and told me he had spotted a giant mudskipper and very generously showed me where it was and let me try to catch it, which luckily I managed to do almost straight away. Learning from my previous error, the fish was quickly popped into a net before being unhooked. Once I did remove the hook, it was actually pretty placid, so I was able to get a few photos before releasing it. I was over the moon with this capture. 

My first giant mudskipper! Quite a handful but, believe it or not, much smaller than the one that outsmarted me!

He was actually pretty chilled out once unhooked!

Lee, who had gone off through some trees to the right of the bridge, had been focusing on catching barramundi the whole day, so I went over to see how he was getting on. He’d seen a couple of them, but hadn’t had any luck getting them to take any of his lures. They just didn't seem to be in the mood. He had also been photographing a small monitor lizard that he had befriended. It kept appearing, eating some ants and then slowly skulking off again.

Lee’s new pal. 

He then pointed out a needlefish to me that was lazily basking in the margin nearby, so I went back to the bridge and grabbed my rod. A piece of freelined prawn was dropped in, the fish slowly edged forward until its toothy beak was alongside it, before it awkwardly ate it the way needlefish do.

My first spottail needlefish. Another new species added to my tally.

So the day was proving very productive species wise, even if the main target on Pulau Ubin hadn’t shown any interest in our attempts to trick it with various fish shaped bits of plastic. As the tide continued to flood into the mangroves, more and more archerfish began to show up. Lee stubbornly stuck to targeting barramundi, but Chris and I decided to have some fun freelining chunks of prawn and caught dozens of archerfish. Eventually I caught a bigger one that didn't look quite the same. It turned out to be a different species. 

In amongst all the banded archerfish I caught this solitary spotted archerfish.

Chris had lots of fun catching archerfish too. 

Lee even managed to get in on the archerfish action, catching one on a top water plug. 

It was soon time to make the hike back to the pier where we'd catch the ferry back to the mainland. Just before we left, some anglers turned up with live prawns to fish them under floats for barramundi. Maybe that would have been a more productive method. We didn’t really have time to hang around to find out though, unless we wanted to spend the night or pay for a very expensive boat charter!

Tight lines, Scott.

Click here for the next part.

Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 5.

Having failed to catch any freshwater species two days earlier, we opted to have another attempt on the fifth day of our trip. The three of us headed up to Kranji Reservoir on the north coast of Singapore to try and catch peacock bass. There are three species found in Singapore, speckled peacock bass, butterfly peacock bass and azul peacock bass. Chris had caught speckled peacock bass before, whilst Lee and I were keen to catch any species of peacock bass for the first time.

Chris caught this lump whilst in Columbia recently.

I was quite excited about the session, but given our experiences in the other legal fishing areas, my expectations weren't too high if I’m honest. Kranji Reservoir is huge, and the two legal fishing areas either side of its dam are tiny in comparison. Any fish that regularly frequent these areas are also heavily pressured. When we arrived, there were lots of other anglers fishing already. We were expecting that. What we weren’t expecting were crocodiles!

I don't know if I was more amazed that there were crocodiles or that there wasn't a fine for being near the water's edge! The authorities in Singapore really do love a fine!

Getting quickly set up right at the bottom of the fishing area, we started fishing, all trying different lures, changing them occasionally, but nothing we cast in resulted in any takes. We did see the odd very small peacock bass feeding on tiny fry in the margins, but even trying small soft plastics in those areas failed to tempt the predators responsible.

Lee and Chris join the crocodiles in the long grasses of Kranji Reservoir Fishing Ground A. They dam is at the top of the reservoir and the tall buildings beyond are actually in Malaysia.

We persevered, fishing away for about three hours, trying various lures at different spots, but sadly none of us had any joy. We decided that it was time for Plan B, so we made the short walk up out of the fishing area and over the road to the seaward side of the reservoir’s dam. The water there was surprisingly dirty, the bottom was very snaggy, and despite throwing out a piece of prawn I got no interest whatsoever. There was also no cover and to make matters worse it was extremely hot too. Did I mention how hot and humid Singapore is? It didn’t take long for us to realise that it was probably time to switch to Plan C. The slight problem with Plan C was that there was no Plan C, it had to be formulated, so we sought some shade and drank some water while I came up with it.

After looking at the places I had saved on Google Maps, I suggested we visit an area where we could fish for small freshwater species in a tiny stream that ran through a jungle and then came out of it continuing its journey along a roadside channel. This would be Phase One of Plan C. A taxi ride and short walk later, we were standing on a small wooden bridge in a lush green and very noisy area surrounded by dense foliage and tall trees. There were lots of small fish in the water flowing underneath the bridge, but there were also lots of insects in the air, some of them were biting varieties. Chris and I decided to soldier on and began fishing, whilst Lee, who wasn't really interested in catching such small fish, decided to keep exploring the jungle’s paths to avoid being eaten alive, and he also wanted to see what wildlife he could spot. When he returned a short time later, Chris and I had caught a couple of the little fish and Lee had seen some cool creatures, so we were all quite happy.

I caught this forest betta from the stream running under the wooden bridge.

Whilst exploring the jungle, Lee spotted this strange creature clinging to a tree. He thinks it was a flying lemur.

Leaving the jungle I had thirty minutes fishing in the roadside channel. Chris and Lee were happy just to watch me catch a few more species before we headed back to the hotel. While I was fishing I also watched a small catfish quickly swim past and into a small pipe. I dangled some prawn next to the pipe to try and tempt it, but couldn't entice it out.

You’d be forgiven for failing to see this small stream as it was so overgrown! There were plenty of small fish in it though!

I caught a few of these small Nile tilapia,..

...and some Indochinese spotted barb too.

It was still very early in the evening when we got back and went out for some food. Afterwards, Phase Two of Plan C began, our first evening session of the trip. We had intended to fish from a spot near the Marina Bay Cruise Terminal for a few hours, but when we got there and started fishing the action was pretty much non existent and the seabed was a tackle hungry beast. It’s not much fun repeatedly tying up drop shot rigs using the light of a head torch just to lose them after a cast or two, and Lee lost a few jigs as well. A move to another venue was discussed.

The cool night scene was the only good thing about the spot we tried.

It's fair to say we were all by that point feeling a bit frustrated with the way the day’s fishing had not gone to any of the plans. I suggested we get a taxi and head along to Bedok Jetty. It was lit up, comfortable and wasn’t a tackle graveyard. So that’s what we did. Sadly, the fishing there was also very slow. There were lots of small baitfish around and lots of squid in the water too, sporadically attacking the baitfish. We caught a few cardinalfish at least, and I added one new species to my tally, so it wasn't a total waste of time. Chris also caught a cardinalfish neither of us had caught during the trip.

There were a few of these rib bar cardinalfish out hunting.

My only new species of the evening was this small saddled grunt.

Chris caught this greedy whitelined cardinalfish on a fairly large chunk of prawn.

So, all things considered it had not been a great day fishing wise. The following morning we were going to catch a ferry over to Pulau Ubin where we were hoping to catch barramundi in its mangroves. At least that was the plan! There would no doubt be new species to catch from the brackish water and I was particularly looking forward to hopefully not only seeing, but also catching some mudskipper!

Tight lines, Scott.

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