More Species Hunting Adventures in Singapore: Part 4.

On the fourth day of our time in Singapore, we caught the ferry over to St John’s Island. Another must visit place for any species hunting angler who visits Singapore in my opinion. Lillian was keen to do some fishing, so I set her up with a Rock Rover of her own. Only a short distance from the landing pier, we kicked the session off by targeting pink speckled shrimpgoby, ledgering small pieces of prawn on the bottom. At this point, I realised that I’d left my bait scissors next to the hotel bathroom sink, which would make cutting up my prawns into nice neat tiny pieces almost impossible, so I’d just have to improvise for the rest of the day. That said, I was still quite annoyed with myself! Anyway, the area we fished over was evidently still home to a very healthy population of pink speckled shrimpgoby, as we both caught one on our first cast. After catching a few more, admiring their amazing markings before popping them back again, we moved on to a second spot nearby.

Pink speckled shrimpgoby are awesome. My personal favourite shrimpgoby!

Just look at those beautiful markings!

It was official. Lillian had joined the pink speckled shrimpgoby fan club!

Arriving at my second chosen spot, I quickly spotted one of the species I had caught there during my visits to St John’s Island the previous year, as well as a species that I had spotted, but had failed to catch. At this point, Lillian declared that she didn't want to fish any more, telling me that it was too hot, and also, that I made fishing and catching fish look much easier than it actually was! I took this as a compliment of sorts, but was slightly disappointed that I’d probably be fishing solo for the rest of the day. As I started fishing again, she seemed quite content to watch and point out fish to me. I was happy that at least she had given it a go, caught a cool species and also had a new-found appreciation for the finely tuned skill set I’ve built up over the years!

The first species I caught at the second spot was orbiculate cardinalfish. Hanging around some drifting debris, they were very obliging when presented with a chunk of prawn. Slow moving, it was also easy to avoid catching them once I'd added them to my tally.

Before too long, a few anchor tuskfish appeared from down amongst the rocks to attack my bait. Fast and very aggressive, they kept darting out and stealing the bait from my intended target!

Eventually, I managed to present my bait close enough to a few yellow banded damselfish for them to get an opportunity to eat it! After striking too soon, pulling the hook out of their mouths a couple of times, I managed to hook one.

Having successfully caught my first new species of the day, I then turned my attention to a shoal of nearby glassfish. Setting up my tanago rod with a simple split shot rig and casting a tiny piece of prawn into the shoal, I quickly caught a few. Popppng them into my viewing tank I quickly realised I had caught two different species, one I recognised from last year's trip to Singapore and a second that was new to me.

This is Kop’s glass perchlet, I caught lots of these whilst fishing out on Pulau Ubin last year.

This tiny transparent fish was my first ever Vachelli’s glass perchlet.

Happy enough with the start to the day, we decided to head over to the causeway joining St John's Island to Lazarus Island. By this point it was very hot, and despite a slight breeze blowing, I was finding the heat pretty hard to bear. I'd also forgotten how unforgiving the reef there could be. Fishing closer in to try to minimise tackle losses, some small damselfish were rapidly and expertly stripping my bait. To make matters worse, hacking my prawns up with my multi tool was producing a mushy paste. Not ideal for achieving a bait presentation that would last a little bit longer!

I think it was the hottest day of the trip so far. Probably not very clever being out fishing in it. Lillian had wisely brought an umbrella, so at least she was able to sit in the shade as I stubbornly soldiered on.

I added a few species to my trip tally, and spotted some Indo-Pacific sergeant that I tried to catch. The smaller damselfish had other ideas, were much more aggressive, and kept stripping my bait within seconds! Clearly there was a large shoal of the much less colourful damselfish down there. Switching to a tiny hook, I started catching the species responsible.

After adding white shouldered whiptail,..

…and silty wrasse to my trip’s tally,..

…I discovered that the super efficient bait strippers were a shoal of silver demoiselle.

Catching the silver demoiselle became slightly annoying, so I began casting further out, but this just resulted in multiple lost rigs. Moving around, constantly rebaiting, or tying up rigs in the intense heat soon became very frustrating, so we walked around to a life-saving, but quite expensive, shipping container shop. A fairly new addition to the Islands, that wasn't there when I visited last year, it was well stocked, so we got some ice creams, two large bottles of ice-cold drinks and found a shady spot near the Seringat Island Pier to relax out of the sun and enjoy them. The floating pontoon had several boats moored to it, so I fished down the wall, over the railing in front of where we were chilling out. The bottom was quite rocky, and I lost a few rigs pretty quickly. I persevered and caught a few fish, but only one species that I hadn’t caught already.

My first Spanish flag snapper of the trip.

Despite the intense heat, which had made fishing rather uncomfortable, time had flown quite quickly, and before we knew it, the time had come for us to head back around to the landing pier on St John’s Island to board the last boat back to the mainland. I may have toiled in the heat and not caught as many species as I’d have liked, but I had still added a few more to my tally, including a couple of new ones. I think the next time I'm in Singapore, I'll make any trip over to the Southern Islands when it's a little bit cooler if possible, perhaps even resorting to going over and spending the night!

Tight lines, Scott.

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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.