Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 2 continued.

Before we travelled to Singapore we were slightly concerned about the potential for us to get a proper soaking. Whilst the climate there is hot and humid, it can also be very wet too, only for relatively short periods usually, but sometimes these can be heavy downpours. 

Rain on the way?

It looked likely that the sweat might get rinsed from our clothes, or we’d have to leave the jetty and retreat to a shelter on the coast at the start of the jetty, but as the dark clouds approached luckily they began to clear and the sun kept shining, so we carried on fishing. Chris caught a dark fish with pale stripes that I thought was a striped eel catfish, a species with venomous spines that can deliver a nasty sting. “Don’t touch that!” I shouted over to him. After he put the fish down, so I could go over to get a better look at it, I realised that it was in fact a remora! These are the long, streamlined fish that hitch a ride on larger fish as they swim along. Had something large just passed under the jetty? Probably!

I'd discover later that Chris’s remora was a live sharksucker. What an awesome capture!

The sucker on the back of its head. Amazing!

Chris was over the moon to catch it and is still occasionally reminding me he had done so. I was, ever so slightly, jealous, but realistically knew that the likelihood of catching one myself was minuscule. Things slowed down a little for a while, but fishing hard on the bottom and casting my rigs under the jetty improved my catch rates slightly. I also moved around from time to time to try my luck in new spots, and this also threw up some new species too. 

This candystripe cardinalfish was the first species of the trip that I’d caught before. I caught one in Kagoshima in Japan in 2020. 

I caught my first damselfish of the trip too. Brown damsels can be very difficult to identify, but I’m confident this is my first silty damselfish.

Chris called me over to show me his second tripodfish species of the trip, a short-nosed tripodfish. 

I also caught this funky, colourful little bluelined hind.

My bottom fishing eventually produced what I hoped it would in the form of a couple of new shrimpgoby species. They were sandwiched around a third new species that I suspected might be my first scorpionfish of the trip. I was wrong about that though and when I discovered what it was the fish in question’s name justified my mistake in a way.

My decision to fish hard on the bottom produced my first ever masked shrimpgoby.

This false scorpionfish had me fooled.

 This lagoon shrimpgoby had some very colourful markings.

As the sun began to dip towards the horizon, the fishing slowed down again. By that point we were all pretty exhausted. Jet lag and dehydration were also no doubt a factor again. Also, despite repeatedly applying generous amounts of sun cream to my sunburnt calf it was still very sore. We called it a day just as it got dark, headed back to the hotel to get freshened up and then went out for food and beer again. 

The end of a long day on Bedok Jetty!

For Chris and I it had been a very productive day fishing with small prawn baits, catching lots of small but interesting species. For Lee, it had been another tough day fishing exclusively with artificials, with not much reward for the many hours of hard work he'd put in. That’s what can happen when you are determined to catch something bigger I suppose.

Tight lines, Scott.

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Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 2.

On day two we decided to head to Bedok Jetty, a very popular fishing venue on the south coast of Singapore. Before heading there we visited a supermarket to stock up on plenty of water, some fruit and a packet of frozen raw prawns for Chris and I to use as bait. Lee would be fishing exclusively with lures again.

The jetty was very busy with both anglers and other people out walking or cycling. It proved to be a good choice of venue for us and we racked up quite a few species as the day went on.

Bedok Jetty. A must visit venue in Singapore for species hunting anglers.

I started the day how I’d ended the previous one, by catching a juvenile grouper. As the morning progressed Chris and I steadily added more species to our tallies, fishing small pieces of prawn on small hooks close to the bottom. Lee fished with metal jigs most of the morning as he wanted to catch a queenfish, a species that is targeted frequently by the locals. There were a lot of tiny bait fish around. Every now and then they’d get hit from below, so Lee was hopeful it was his target species that were harassing them.

My first fish of the day was this sixbar grouper.

After a few diamond wrasse I caught this butterfly whiptail.

Chris caught this long tail tripodfish. How cool! I wanted to catch one. 

I caught a monogrammed monocle bream,

…a herring scad…

…and my first pearly-spotted wrasse of the trip. 

Whilst Chris and I were steadily catching fish, Lee was jigging away with various metals and after a few knocks his effort was eventually rewarded with a fish in the shape of a greater lizardfish. 

Not what Lee was hoping for, but he was off the mark at least. 

After a few hours, a rod in a holder on the railings just along from us started bouncing away. We shouted over to the angler who owned it, who had wandered off, to let him know that he had a fish on. After a short fight and with the aid of another angler’s net he landed a nice queenfish. Seeing this, Chris and I set up heavy lure rods and joined Lee to do a bit of jigging for a while. After about an hour with not even a touch though, I switched back to fishing small pieces of prawn on my Rock Rover again! Chris soon joined me and we both caught a few fanbellied filefish amongst other species we’d already had. 

The fanbellied filefish! Such an awesome fish!

Lee was still jigging away, trying to get his lures out near some bait balls further out. I don’t think he was quite able to reach them though although closer in he hooked something that turned out to be a wolf herring, a rather bizarre fish that has the delicate body and scales of a herring and a cavernous mouth full of nasty long teeth. 

Lee’s wolf herring. What a weird fish. 

Into the early afternoon Chris and I continued to catch a reasonable number of fish. Now and then the various wrasse species would be beaten to our bait and if we were lucky we’d catch a new species. There are several sardinella species around Bedok Jetty and some local anglers were jigging sabiki to catch them. I switched to a set of sabiki myself to try and catch some but had no luck. The locals were very proficient at catching them, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what they were doing to catch so many. Later in the session I did catch one on a small piece of prawn though!

Chris caught a few of these rib bar cardinalfish before I finally got one too. 

My prawn caught goldstripe sardinella.

Switching to fishing on the bottom with a running ledger, I was hoping to catch some shrimpgoby. Before I caught any though it produced this freckled goatfish.

Mid afternoon there were a few flashes of lightning, and several seconds later, the sound of thunder broke the relative quiet of the jetty. Looking to the south west, dark clouds were drifting over the multitude of container ships waiting to get into port. Was the Singapore weather about to go from hot and very sweaty to hot and very wet? We would soon find out!

Tight lines, Scott.

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Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 1.

Last month I flew out to Singapore with two of my mates, Chris and Lee, for a week of sweating profusely in the country's ridiculous, highly humid climate whilst trying to do some fishing. Singapore is home to hundreds of different species, so I was very excited to see how many I could catch. 

After a long flight from Heathrow, where Chris and I almost missed our connection due to a delayed flight from Edinburgh and a ludicrously long wait at the baggage belts in domestic arrivals, which resulted in a mad dash from Terminal 5 to Terminal 2, just making the check in desk with a minute to spare, we arrived at our hotel located in the Geylang area at about 10:00 on Wednesday the 21st. Our taxi driver, on the way there from the airport, insisted that we knew fine well that Geylang was the location of a large red-light district, despite us telling him repeatedly that it was merely the most affordable accommodation we found, and we were there only to fish for a week! 

After checking in, having a badly needed shower and getting changed, we jumped in another taxi, and went fishing at a few spots along the South Marina Promenade. Chris and I fished with Angleworm and Isome on a drop shot rig, whilst Lee tried searching the water column with small metal jigs and soft plastics on jigheads. Of course, before going, I'd done some research into the most likely species we would encounter and sure enough some of the most common ones were the first ones we caught.

The south coast of Singapore on a hot, sticky day. As it turns out, that’s pretty normal weather for Singapore.

My first fish of the trip was this seagrass tuskfish. Tuskfish are a subgroup of the wrasse family. They have quite prominent tusk like teeth, although they're not visible in this photo.

This was soon followed by lots of anchor tuskfish, they would turn out to be the much more commonly caught of the two species.

The third species I caught was this diamond wrasse, another very common species in shallow rocky areas. Also known as the bubblefin wrasse. 

After catching quite a few of the three wrasse species above, Chris caught a couple of small Spanish Flag snapper and I then caught this small dory snapper.

Chris and I were fishing close to the bottom. Lee searched the water column and wasn't catching many fish. Over several trips with Lee I’ve gotten used to this, he knows what he enjoys and through perseverance usually catches some pretty cool fish,..

...like this fringe eyed flathead.

After moving around a few times, we ended up hiding in the shade of some trees. We were all still sweating a lot and were also probably starting to feel a bit of jet lag kicking in. We soldiered on for a while longer though and were rewarded with a few more fish.

These pink ear emperor were pretty common.

I caught a solitary notchfin threadfin bream.

As well as another small snapper, this one is a yellowfin snapper.

I also caught my first grouper species of the trip when this small chocolate hind took my piece of angleworm.

By the early evening, the action had slowed down, and we had run out of bottled water. We had probably lost more water through perspiration than we had drank, so we desperately needed to rehydrate, so we packed up and headed back to the hotel. The air conditioning in our rooms was excellent thankfully and after another refreshing cold shower we headed out in the evening to explore the area, wandering around, eating some tasty food and washing it down with a few ice cold beers. It hadn’t been a bad start to our trip on the species hunting front, although I had managed to get sunburned on my left calf. I must have missed the area when applying my sun cream. Oops!

Tight lines, Scott.

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Spot the difference.

Over the last ten years I've fished in various location around the Mediterranean Sea and also around the various islands of the Canaries. During that time, I've caught lots of painted combers. Or so I thought. Recently I was informed that the combers I'd caught in the Canary Islands might not be the painted variety and may in fact be butterfly winged combers. I'd never even heard of a butterfly winged comber before, so I immediately did a Google search. It threw up the following article that describes the differences between the painted comber and the butterfly winged comber and how the butterfly winged comber species had incorrectly been put together with the painted comber and sort of forgotten about.

Looking back through my blog, I studied the photos I've taken and sure enough there were obvious differences in the appearance of all the Mediterranean fish and those caught in the Eastern Atlantic. I've split the two sets below.

Locations around the Mediterranean Sea.

Crete.

Zakynthos.

Menorca.

L'Ametlla de Mar.

Cavtat.

Crete.

Kefalonia.

Crete.

Locations around the Canary Islands.

Lanzarote.

Fuerteventura.

Lanzarote.

Lanzarote.

As you can see from the examples above the vertical stripe pattern is different. The painted comber has many more than the buttefly winging comber, which only has two. The blue markings, both under the eyes and also on the flanks are much brighter in the painted comber also, with the blue markings on the butterfly winged comber being noticeably paler. I also think the head is relatively not as deep and is longer on the butterfly winged comber.

So, without leaving the house I've added another species to my life list. Great!

Tight lines, Scott.

The end of the rainbow?

Last month, the day before I flew out to Singapore, my luggage was all packed, so I headed out for a couple of hours to fish the Biel Water. Many years ago I caught some small rainbow trout there, escapees from a fish farm that used to sit next to the small East Lothian river. I wasn’t sure if the farm was still operational but thought I’d try my luck anyway. When I arrived, I slowly crept down to the water's edge and quickly set about freelining single maggots. I soon discovered there were lots of minnow and the odd three spined stickleback in the first pool I tried.

I've caught quite a lot of minnows this year,...

...and a fair amount of three spined stickleback too!

As I fished away, there were lots of insects hatching and a kingfisher flew upstream in a streak of electric blue. At one point a mayfly landed on my rod a couple of times. Raising my rod up towards myself, I carefully cupped my hand over it and then picked it up for closer inspection. 

I'd never seen a mayfly so close before. Insects are strange looking things!

Suddenly I realised that I was having so much fun catching lots of diminutive fish that I'd forgotten the reason for my visit! Refocussing, I headed upstream to try another pool. Almost immediately, I caught a small trout from under some overhanging tree branches, but it wasn't the species I was after.

Not the trout I was after.

I fished on for a couple of hours, catching more minnows and another two small brown trout. I didn’t catch any rainbow trout, as I've already said, I’m not even sure the fish farm is still operating and if not any escapees might be long gone. I'll just have to visit a trout fishery later in the year to catch a rainbow trout I suppose. Not my favourite places to frequent but at least there’s also the chance to catch a brook trout too while I'm there.

Tight lines, Scott.