More Species Hunting Adventures in Singapore: Part 5.

The day after visiting the Southern Islands, and having rehydrated ourselves thoroughly, we had a break from fishing and took a Grab taxi north, where we spent the day on the Mandai Nature Reserve. There, we visited Singapore Zoo and River Wonders, and had a very enjoyable day. Singapore Zoo was very impressive, having a very open feeling to it, making close encounters with some of the animals possible.

This red ruffed lemur was chilling out right next to the path!

Even enclosures, like the panda's, were designed so well, you could easily forget you were in a zoo!

In the evening, as the park was about to close, we caught a transfer coach east to Khatib MRT station, and from there we walked south to Lower Seletar Reservoir’s legal fishing zone. There, I spent an hour or so fishing at the water’s edge, using my headtorch to search for fish that were hanging out in the submerged rocks. It was a fun session sneaking around in the dark, and I managed to catch a few fish. 

No chance of sunburn, but it was still quite hot!

I caught a few of these threadfin acara, a new species for me. They were sat motionless and dropping a piece of prawn down in front of them and twitching it around either resulted in a take, or the fish swimming off.  

We were just about to leave when I saw this fish’s head poking out of a gap in the rocks. At first, I thought it was a small snakehead. It eagerly snaffled my bait and was quickly pulled out of its hiding hole. It turned out to be my second new species of the evening, a marble goby. 

The following day, we left the mainland again, this time taking a bumboat over to the island of Pulau Ubin. I know what you're thinking! The name bumboat comes from Dutch word boomschuit, a combination of the words boom (tree) and schuit (boat), just to save you Googling as well! On Pulau Ubin, we spend the day wandering around, and I planned to fish around a couple of bridges that cross over the island’s expansive mangroves. Passing a drainage ditch on our way to the first spot, I quickly set up my tanago rod and winkled out a few small fish from it. 

The ditch didn’t have a lot of water in it, a few centimetres at most, but what shallow pools were present contained a few of these pretty little knight goby. 

Walking along the road through the jungle, admiring the multitude of beautiful butterflies as we went, we stopped several times, struggling to get photographs of them as they would stay still for no more than a few seconds. Giving up, we carried on with our stroll and soon reached the first fishing spot. My focus there, to begin with, was on the exposed banks of the mangrove and not on the water. It was mudskipper time! There are several species of mudskipper found on Pulau Ubin, but after a while I had somehow only managed to catch one of them. 

The barred mudskipper was the only species I managed to catch.

I was really hoping to catch a giant mudskipper at this spot, but sadly, we didn’t see any of them. So instead, I turned my attention to fishing in the water! After fishing in mud for an hour or so, it initially felt a little odd! Small hooks and little chunks of prawn soon produced a few different species.

Stripe-nosed halfbeak were present in large numbers. Darting over and greedily gobbling anything near the surface.

Their mouths are so weird!

I caught my first tropical sand goby, also known as the green-shouldered goby. It took a bit of prawn, slowly twitched along the bottom.

As did this silver sillago, a species I have caught before.

After a while, I hadn’t caught anything new, and when a monkey arrived and started lurking around just out of sight, it made Lillian a little nervous, so it was definitely time for a move. We headed further west until we reached the next bridge. When we got there, I forgot about what fish might be in the water again, and began scanning the exposed mud of the mangrove banks. There were dozens of one of the larger mudskipper species present, the algae eating, Boddart’s goggle-eyed goby, but initially I didn’t spot any giant mudskipper. I know from experience that trying to tempt algae eating fish with regular bait can be extremely challenging, and this proved to be the case. Dropping bait in their vicinity almost always resulted in the target scuttling off across the mud in disgust, or the odd fish simply ignored it. 

Eventually, I watched a giant mudskipper appearing from a big burrow in the muddy bank opposite, and after waddling through the mud, it settled down by the water’s edge. Fussy eaters, they are not! As soon as my piece of prawn landed near it, the fish quickly shuffled over and swallowed it eagerly! I waited a second before striking firmly to set the hook properly. Fighting a fish through mud is a pretty strange experience. It’s more a case of avoiding getting your line tangled around branches and other debris as you slowly winch it back towards you. I soon “landed” the fish and popped it into my net to prevent any escape attempts, but it was well hooked and going nowhere. Washing the mud from it before taking a few photos, I was over the moon to catch only my second ever giant mudskipper.

In my experience, once you unhook them and handle them for a bit, giant mudskipper actually become quite calm.

I love catching giant mudskipper! Can you tell from my demented expression?!

Popping the big brute back, it headed straight back over to its burrow and disappeared, no doubt taking some time to contemplate its strange encounter with the weird looking creature. Yet again, turning my attention back to fish that lead a much more conventional lifestyle, I started targeting the archerfish that were hanging out in the area. They are also a very cool group of fish in their own right! They live in the water but prey on food items that are often out of it after all! There were two species present, but only the banded archerfish, which made up the vast majority of the shoal, were fooled by my prawn and bread chunks hitting the water, rushing over to engulf them quickly. 

I ended up catching dozens of these banded archerfish. Great fun on my ultralight tackle. 

The handful of spotted archerfish in the group were clearly being a bit more selective in what they ate. Really, I should have gone off and found an insect to hook and cast out, but Lillian was already slightly freaked out be the fairly big lesser banded hornets that were munching away on a big piece of prawn I'd left out on the wooden rail in front of me, so I binned that idea. Instead, I switched to fishing on the bottom for a while again. This produced a few more knight goby, and then I caught my second new species of the day. 

My first amboina cardinalfish. Quite a pretty little fish with some iridescent markings. 

At this point, we heard a thunderstorm approaching, and it started to rain. Lightly to begin with, but I suggested we head all the way back to the landing pier. If it was dry when we got there, I’d fish for a while from the pier itself. If it was raining, there were places where we could get some shelter. We also planned to climb up Butterfly Hill on our way back to try again to get some photographs of them, but unfortunately the rain’s intensity increased before we reached the bottom of it and by the time we had made it back to the pier, we had taken a bit of a soaking. 

It rained heavily for a while, and as we were already soaked, I decided to just pack away all my fishing tackle. With no sign of the thunderstorm or the rain stopping, we decided to cut our visit to Pulau Ubin short, making a final dash out onto the landing pier to catch another bumboat back to the mainland.

So, the weather had not been kind yet again on our second day trip to an offshore island. That's travel for you, and we still had an enjoyable time there despite getting drenched! Despite being a little worried about what its intentions were, Lillian was happy to have seen her first wild monkey. On the fishing front, I'd caught a couple of new species and added a few more to my tally for the trip. I enjoyed catching the giant mudskipper in particular. They are such a bizarre fish! The archerfish were great fun too. I'd caught fifty-one species during our time in Singapore, including twenty new ones. Not too bad I felt, probably exceeding my expectations given we'd done a fair bit of sightseeing. The following day we were flying from Singapore to Phnom Penh in Cambodia to begin the second part of our adventure. I wasn't sure what to expect fishing wise but was really looking forward to visiting a new country and trying to catch some fish there too!

Tight lines, Scott.