More species hunting adventures in Singapore: Part 1.

At the start of November, my girlfriend Lillian and I headed off on our fourth trip to Asia. We both love visiting that part of the world, and this time we began and ended our journey in Singapore, a country I visited last year for a one-week fishing trip with two of my mates. As well as being an amazing place, Singapore is also a species hunter’s dream, with an incredible amount of diversity in the fish species found there. The last time I visited, I caught sixty-nine in a week and barely scratched the surface. There are over a thousand species in the waters of Singapore!

Arriving in the morning, and not feeling tired at all, despite having not slept much on the thirteen-hour flight there, we decided to do some sightseeing on our first day. I left my fishing tackle in our hotel room and off we went. After catching the MRT Circle Line from Mountbatten to Bayfront, we spent the day visiting a few of the well known tourist attractions in the surrounding area. It was raining when we emerged next to the Bay Sands Marina Hotel, so we headed to the nearby Flower Dome and Cloud Forest, two gigantic air-conditioned glass greenhouses housing impressive gardens inside.

The Flower Dome contains a plethora of exotics plants!

Some impressive wooden sculptures too, my favourite being this dragon.

Inside the Cloud Forest green house there were several impressive water features.

Cloud Forest was set over many different levels with elevated walkways.

From high up inside, we could see our next stop, the SkyPark Observation Deck at the top of the iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel. The rain had stopped, so we walked through the Gardens By The Bay to get there.

From the SkyPark up on the 57th floor of the hotel, we enjoyed panoramic views, including of where we had just come from, The Flower Dome, Cloud Forest and the Gardens by the Bay.

Returning to the ground floor, we then took a walk all the way around the bay, passing the Merlion fountain.

The last stop on our sightseeing tour was the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel.

Where we enjoyed a couple of its famous Singapore Sling cocktails.

By this point it was early evening, and having covered a fair distance on foot, in Singapore's hot and humid conditions, we were both feeling a bit tired, so we headed back to the Geylang neighbourhood where we were staying and had some food, before retreating back to our air-conditioned hotel for a shower and fairly early night!

On day two, we had a bit of a lie in to try and catch on some much-needed sleep. When we did finally get up, I grabbed my fishing tackle, and we set off on foot to use the MRT again. On the way to Aljunied Station, I picked up some large prawns at the Sheng Siong supermarket on Geylang Road and popped them into my wide-mouthed flask. It’s great for keeping them frozen all day until I take them out one at a time to chop them up! After a couple of line changes, we eventually arrived at Bayshore MRT station and waked from there down to Bedok Jetty, a must-visit venue for any species hunting angler who visits Singapore! Arriving just before noon, we strolled out onto it and in the shade of one of the jetty’s four small covered areas, I set up a simple two hook flapper rig and baited up its small hooks with little chunks of prawn. A slight wind kept us cool as I fished away, I quickly opened my account, then steadily added more species to my tally as the afternoon progressed. No casting was required, as many fish are located around the structure's legs or underneath it. Dropping straight down, literally every cast resulted in instant bites, my hooks either being stripped in no time at all, or a fish being caught.

Bedok Jetty produces a multitude of species!

My first fish of the trip was this pink ear emperor. There are lots of these around Bedok Jetty.

After catching a few of them, I caught a pearly spotted wrasse.

A type of smelt-whiting, this bottom feeder is an Oriental sillago.

Next up was a small fanbellied filefish, another species I caught on Bedok Jetty when I visited last year

My first new species of the trip was this banded silver biddy.

I then caught this rib bar cardinalfish,..

...and a small false scorpionfish. As its name suggests, this species isn't actually a true scorpionfish. It is not venomous, but its appearance provides the benefit that the close resemblance protects it from predators, which would not prey upon the venomous scorpionfish that it looks like.

Next up I caught a few of these spiky little fish, at first glance I mistook them for crested grunter, but they were in fact banded grunter, making them my second new species of the trip. The stripes on a crested grunter are curved.

I then caught a beautifully colourful butterfly whiptail. The second part of their name comes from the very long filamentous ray at the top of their tail fin.

Only a few hours into my first session and I was almost into double figures. Not a bad start at all. We then decided to move around a bit and to try fishing over a few different spots. The current had picked up and it was pulling my rig out away from the pier. A switch of sides was in order so that I could use the current to get my rig underneath the pier instead.

Tight lines, Scott.

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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.

Click here for the next part.