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.

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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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Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 4.

On the morning of the fourth day of the trip I wasn’t feeling too great. Jet lag? Dehydration? Heatstroke? Too much spicy food and beer? I’m not sure, but let’s put it this way, I didn’t want to venture too far from a toilet. I was pretty close to telling Chris, Lee and Jon that I wasn’t going to be able to go with them to catch the ferry over to the Southern Islands. However, when Jon told me that there were toilets on St John’s Island where the ferry would initially drop us off, I decided to take my chances instead of wasting a day in the hotel. Upon arrival on St John's island, I quickly got my bearings and located somewhere to fish that was within a short sprint from the toilets. Chris, Lee and Jon went off to fish various spots in search of bigger fish using heavier tackle, but I didn't dare do that, opting instead to stay in pretty much the same spot all day.

St John’s Island pier where we were dropped off, from the bridge connecting St John's Island to Lazarus Island.

I spent the majority of the day fishing from and around the bridge. A popular spot with the locals, who were jigging sabiki in the current flowing through the arches of the bridge. It was popular with me as it wasn't too far from the public facilities.

A couple of bathroom breaks aside, I had a pretty enjoyable day sitting on my own, fishing away with my ultra light setup, using small pieces of prawn on small hooks. At first, I fished in close over a rocky area and caught quite a few species I'd added to my tally already during the trip, but eventually I caught what I thought were two new species of wrasse. I'd later discover I'd just caught both very different looking sexes of the same species!

There were lots of reasonably sized anchor tuskfish around.

Lots of damselfish too. I'm now reasonably confident this one is another silty damselfish.

There were a few wrasse around as well, including this small pearly-spotted wrasse.

First new species of the day and it’s ladies first! This is a female silty wrasse...

..and this is a male silty wrasse. What a fantastic example of sexual dimorphism in fish!

Then casting out as far as I could, I caught something completely different, a species from a group of fish that I'd hoped to catch before the trip began. Before I visited Okinawa earlier in the year actually. A clownfish!

My first clownfish! How cool is that?! This one is a tomato clownfish. Nemo's cousin!

I was ecstatic but after that, I didn't catch anything new for a while, and casting further out was very snaggy, so I moved to fish from a wall up above a rocky area. To begin with all I caught were lots of diamond wrasse and anchor tuskfish, but after a while I spotted a small orange fish that I'm pretty sure was Nemo! An anemone clownfish, swimming in and out of, that's right, a large anemone! Well, I spent about an hour trying to catch him, but didn't manage to do so. I did succeed in pulling the tiny bait out of his mouth twice before he lost interest and disappeared, so I almost got him! In the process, I did catch my first silver demoiselle of the trip.

My consolation prize! I caught a few of these silver demoiselle when I switched to #18 hooks.

After catching a few more diamond wrasse and anchor tuskfish, I decided another move was in order and headed back onto the bridge. Picking a spot above one of its arches where the current was pushing through. As I was getting comfortable, Chris, Lee and Jon came back around in a bit of a rush. They told me they were off to catch the ferry to Kusu Island and asked if I was going to join them. I still didn't feel one hundred percent, so I apologised and told them I was going to stay put, and that I'd meet them back at South Marina Ferry Terminal back on the mainland in the evening. They were walking rather briskly that I didn't really get a chance to ask them how they'd got on! As the lads hurried off to catch the ferry, I started fishing again, and the move proved to be a great decision. I caught quite a few anchor tuskfish, but I also caught quite a few new species too!

A solitary redbelly yellowtail fusilier,..

...a colourful Indo-Pacific sergeant,..

...a honey-head damselfish with beautiful purple markings around its eyes,..

..and a Bengal sergeant.

After a couple of hours I decided It would be a better idea if I caught the 16:00 ferry back to the mainland and fished there for a while from South Marina Promenade where I could watch for Chris, Lee and Jon arriving back on the last ferry back from Kusu. I made my way back around to St John's ferry pier and fished near it for thirty minutes before the ferry arrived. This proved fruitful as the sandy bottom there produced lots of fish including a couple of species in hadn’t caught yet on the trip. 

The first were these oriental sillago. I caught a few of them, and they were hitting my bait pretty much as soon as it hit the bottom. 

I also caught a few pink-speckled shrimpgoby. Only the second species of the trip that I’d caught before visiting Singapore. I caught one whilst on Okinawa earlier this year. They were also pretty aggressive. 

After taking the ferry back to the mainland, I grabbed some food and a large bottle of water before heading along the promenade where I found some shade under a tree. I was slightly worried about having something to eat but it actually made me feel a lot better and my stomach had obviously settled down which was a relief. I fished for an hour or so, catching a few diamond wrasse, anchor tuskfish and notchfin threadfin bream. In addition, I also caught a nice seagrass tuskfish at distance that tried to get into a few snags as I wound it in, but I managed to bully it out of them.

My last fish of the day before I spotted the lad’s ferry coming in. 

Quickly packing up, I walked back along to the ferry terminal and met the lads as they got off the boat. I was keen to find out how they’d got on. Pretty poorly it turned out. None of them had caught anything on their heavy gear, although they had seen a large fish smashing bait fish at one point. They had sensibly all switched to ultra light tackle for a short spell and managed to catch some small fish so at least they all hadn't blanked! We thanked Jon for meeting up with us and I apologised again for not spending the day with everyone. In the evening we headed out again for food and beers. We were more than halfway through the trip, and I was pleased with my progress so far having racked up almost forty species. With three days to go I was hopeful I could reach at least sixty. 

Tight lines, Scott.

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Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 3.

On day three, Lee had arranged for us to meet up briefly in the afternoon with Jon, Tronixfishing’s Singapore Rep, in a tackle shop. We were going to visit the Southern Islands on day four with him, and it was also a chance to have a short break from fishing to look at some cool tackle and perhaps get some local intel. We spent the morning visiting several freshwater fishing zones, steadily making our way towards the meeting point. In Singapore, freshwater fishing is limited to a few controlled areas. None of the ones we fished produced anything, although we did see small groups of tilapia and a small catfish cruising around on the surface, so there were fish present. From the legal fishing spots we visited I got the impression that they weren’t particularly productive places to fish though!

Fishing/hiding in the shade of some trees in Marina Reservoir Fishing Zone 1.

Being away from the coast in mainly built up areas all morning meant it felt like the hottest day of the trip so far. It might not have been in reality, but without the wind to cool us, the heat was pretty brutal, almost unbearable. In an attempt to protect my sunburnt leg, I had decided to wear a pair of gym leggings under my shorts. I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable they were, and I didn’t feel any hotter wearing them than I had without wearing them the previous two days. That said, I don’t think that was possible! Singapore just feels very hot all the time!

By the time we got close to where we were meeting Jon we’d pretty much given up on catching any fish, so Lee rang him, and he agreed to meet us sooner. After visiting a fly fishing tackle shop, we met up with Jon at the lure fishing tackle shop. He was a nice guy and after a chat we bought some tackle from the shop and got some advice on potential places to fish. Jon also introduced us to some young locals who were planning on fishing some illegal spots in the afternoon for peacock bass. They kindly offered to take us with them, so we had a tricky decision to make. The fines for fishing illegally were quite hefty, so after some discussion we decided against it. Instead, we caught a taxi to Labrador Jetty, a small pier in the Labrador Nature Reserve that has a fishing area at the end of it.

Another comfortable fishing platform, the fishing areas on Labrador Jetty, the two arms at the end,  were clearly marked.

Once again, Lee opted to cast jigs around, whilst Chris and I started off fishing small pieces of prawn on small hooks. The two of us caught a variety of small species and whilst the bites weren’t coming thick and fast, most of the fish we caught were new ones, so I was happy enough fishing away. 

Amongst the fish I caught on Labrador Jetty was this Chinese demoiselle, 

…a deep-bodied mojarra,..

…a few of these ornate threadfin bream,..

…a yellowstripe scad,..

…and a whipfin ponyfish.

Chris caught this regal demoiselle.

After a while, Lee called over to say that some baitfish were being taken from the surface on the inside of the arm of the pier that we were fishing from. Chris went over and joined Lee for a while to try and catch the culprits, leaving me on my own to try and rack up more additions to my trip tally. I managed to do just that.

I mainly caught lots of notchfin threadfin bream, a species I caught on day one.

I also caught a tiny Suez pufferfish,..

...and my first ever anchovy. I think it was an Indian anchovy. 

I also added a lattice monocle bream to my tally along with...

...a small ornage spotted grouper.

Things went very quiet after a while, so we decided to end the session and head back to the hotel. It had been a tough day and whilst Chris and I had caught a few fish, Lee hadn't caught anything at all. We were all looking forward to visiting the Southern Islands of St John's, Lazarus, Seringat and Kusu the following day though. After a quite tough day's fishing, especially for Lee, I was hopeful the fishing would be better there and that Lee would catch the bigger fish that he had put so much effort into trying to catch. 

Tight lines, Scott.

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