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.
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| 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!
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| In amongst all the small wrasse and tuskfish I caught my second bluelined hind of the trip. |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| There were some pretty big anchor tuskfish. |
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| I also caught some Spanish flag snapper. A species Chris had caught on the first day of the trip. |
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| 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.
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| This is my first saw-jawed monocle bream. |
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| 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.
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| This was my first ever moon wrasse and... |
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| ...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.
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| I'd previously caught crested grunter on both Okinawa in Japan and Jeju Island in South Korea. |
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| 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.
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| 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. |
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| A lovely waterside view of the Singapore skyline. |
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| 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. |
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| 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...
- Anchor Tuskfish
- Banded Archerfish
- Barred Mudskipper
- Bengal Sergeant
- Bluelined Hind
- Bluespotted Hind
- Brownback Trevally
- Butterfly Whiptail
- Candystripe Cardinalfish
- Cantor’s Gudgeon
- Carpet Eel-Blenny
- Chinese Damselfish
- Chocolate Hind
- Crested Grunter
- Deep-Bodied Mojarra
- Diamond Wrasse
- Dory Snapper
- False Scorpionfish
- Fanbellied Filefish
- Forest Betta
- Freckled Goatfish
- Giant Mudskipper
- Goldstripe Sardinella
- Herring Scad
- Honey-Head Damsel
- Indian Anchovy
- Indo-Pacific Sergeant
- Indochinese Spotted Barb
- Knight Goby
- Kops’ Glass Perchlet
- Lagoon Shrimpgoby
- Lattice Monocle Bream
- Masked Shrimpgoby
- Mayan Cichlid
- Monogrammed Monocle Bream
- Moon Wrasse
- Nile Tilapia
- Notchedfin Threadfin Bream
- Orange Spotted Grouper
- Orbiculate Cardinalfish
- Oriental Sillago
- Ornate Threadfin Bream
- Pearly-Spotted Wrasse
- Pink Ear Emperor
- Pink-Speckled Shrimpgoby
- Redbelly Yellowtail Fusilier
- Redbreasted Maori Wrasse
- Rib Bar Cardinalfish
- Saddled Grunt
- Saw-Jawed Monocle Bream
- Seagrass Tuskfish
- Silty Damselfish
- Silty Wrasse
- Silver Demoiselle
- Silver Sillago
- Sixbar Grouper
- Spanish Flag Snapper
- Spottail Needlefish
- Spotted Archerfish
- Stripe-nosed Halfbeak
- Suez Pufferfish
- Tomato Clownfish
- Whipfin Ponyfish
- White Shouldered Whiptail
- Yellow-spotted Mudskipper
- Yellowfin Snapper
- Yellowstripe Scad
These species were also caught by Chris and Lee, but not by me...
- Banded damselfish
- Fringe Eyed Flathead
- Greater Lizardfish
- Live Sharksucker
- Long Tail Tripodfish
- Regal Demoiselle
- Short-nosed Tripodfish
- Sinuous Gudgeon
- Vachelli's Glass Perchlet
- Whitelined Cardinalfish
- Wolf Herring
- 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.
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