Species hunting adventures in Phuket: Part 2.

On our second day in Phuket, we decided to head back to Nai Harn Beach. Leaving our apartment, Lillian drew my attention to a butterfly. At first glance I thought she had mistaken a leaf on the stairs for one, but after a double take I realised she was right, it was in fact a butterfly camouflaged to resemble a leaf! 

Great effort but the legs gave the game away!

Returning to the seaward side of the sluice gate at the southern end of Nai Harn Beach to have another go at catching a juvenile silver moony, they once again proved to be very cautious and I didn't get any of them to bite. After catching about a dozen or so crested grunter, I spotted some tiny mudskipper sitting on some floating debris and turned my attention to catching some of them. 

Target acquired! Tanago hook time!

I caught a few, most of them were juvenile barred mudskipper, but the smallest I caught turned out to be minute mudskipper. A nice fish to test out my micro species viewing tank!

After spending a bit more time unsuccessfully trying to catch a juvenile silver moony, we drove around to the rocks on the right-hand side of Nai Harn Beach again. My plan for the session was to fish in the actual sea, but first I wanted to target the very fussy, algae eating blenny in the rockpools again. The tide was further out than the previous day, and it was also not as windy either. This meant that a large number of my target species were more concentrated, making it easier to sight fish for them. In a similar fashion to the algae eating mudskipper species on Pulau Ubin, dropping a small chunk of prawn down in front of them often resulted in them simply swimming off, at best they would just ignore it. There were dozens of them in the rockpool, so I just kept trying to tempt them, one fish after another. Eventually, a larger specimen showed some interest, more of an aggressive response than feeding behaviour I think, but quickly striking I managed to hook the fish. Lifting it up, showing it to Lillian, my gleeful expression didn’t last long. The blenny thrashed itself free, fell from my hand, landed back in the rockpool and swam off laughing. I hadn’t even taken a photo! Setting about catching a second, it was a struggle to get another one to have a go at my prawn chunk. I’d soon spent over an hour trying without any joy. Suddenly, I noticed a small group of surgeonfish in another rockpool, and set about catching one. After a few aggressive damselfish and wrasse had been caught and released into a different rockpool, one of them got an opportunity to take my bait, and I’d caught my first new species of the day. 

This is a yellowfin surgeonfish. My first ever surgeonfish in fact. Surgeonfish have very sharp needle like spines either side of their caudal peduncle. 

Turning my attention back to catching a blenny, I found another larger specimen that seemed to be annoyed by the appearance of my prawn chunk in front of his face. After striking a couple of times and missing, I succeeded in getting it to attack again and this time set the hook. This time the fish was popped straight into my photo tank!

Instead of fifteen minutes, I ended up spending slightly over two hours before I caught and photographed my second ever streaky rockskipper! 

Relieved to have secured photographic evidence of catching this incredibly fussy blenny, I began fishing at very close range from the rocks into the sea. Straight away, I caught several moon wrasse, a species I caught for the first time last year in Singapore. These were the predominant wrasse species in the area. In amongst dozens of them I caught a few other species of wrasse, all of them for the first time. 

From the same genus as the ornate wrasse found in the Mediterranean, I soon realised the moon wrasse could be just as much of a nuisance!

In amongst all the moon wrasse, I also caught a Jansen's wrasse,..

…both initial phase Pacific dusky wrasse…

…and the much more colourful terminal phase,…

…and a solitary Timor wrasse.

Happy with how the morning session was going, Lillian called me over to show me an amazing caterpillar that she had noticed crawling over a large boulder close to the one she has been sitting on. 

Perhaps the coolest caterpillar I've ever seen!

In the afternoon, we went for a trip up the west coast of Phuket. It was a nice drive on winding roads, climbing up and down rugged cliffs and passing through some up the island's smaller villages and also larger towns, including those that attract nightlife seeking tourists. Stopping in Karon Beach briefly for some lunch, we continued our drive north, stopping at a tidal creek so I could have a quick session. There were shoals of tiny fish in the margins, so I set about catching them to begin with. 

The tiny fish attacked the tiny pieces of prawn with much gusto, but it was a real struggle to hook them. Eventually, after a few dropping off as I lifted them out, I managed to catch two of them.

The turned out to be my first ever Javan ricefish. Owner smallest tanago hooks were just small enough. I understand there is an even smaller tanago hook called Migen that are great for the tiniest of targets with the most miniscule of mouths! I’ll definitely have to get some of those!

Switching to my ultralight rod, I fished a larger piece of prawn on the bottom out in the deeper water in the middle of the creek. It took a while to get a bite, and when I hooked a fish it got caught on the bottom. At least it felt like that. It was firmly lodged, and I was about to pull for a break, when suddenly the fish was free again. Winding what turned out to be my first whipfin silver biddy, upon unhooking it I noticed it has some fresh wounds on its posterior. Something had tried to eat it!

Not a great day for this whipfin silver biddy. I’ve caught fish with scarring from far worse wounds, so popping it back perhaps it still had a fighting chance.

Continuing our drive north, we eventually arrived at Banana Beach and parked the hire car. From there we took a stroll up a jungle path, following a stream uphill to Kluai Waterfall.

A beautiful spot tucked away in the jungle. 

Below the waterfall was a nice pool and I quickly set about trying to catch a fish from it. After a short wait, I got a strange tug on my line and wound in a small crayfish with ridiculously long claws. The sky had been quite overcast, threatening to open all day and when a few spots of rain began to land on the pond, I guessed what was about to come. Quickly packing up my tackle, I told Lillian we had better head back down the hill. Sure enough, it was soon raining torrentially, and by the time we made it back to the car, we were both soaked to the skin. Driving back to Rawai with the car’s heater on full blast to try and dry off, another day’s fishing was over. In the evening, we went for a walk into town and enjoyed a nice meal. With only two days left in Phuket, I was keen to add a few more species to my tally before we headed back to Singapore.

Tight lines, Scott.

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Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 7.

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. 

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!

In amongst all the small wrasse and tuskfish I caught my second bluelined hind of the trip.

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.

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. 

There were some pretty big anchor tuskfish. 

I also caught some Spanish flag snapper. A species Chris had caught on the first day of the trip. 

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.

This is my first saw-jawed monocle bream. 

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. 

This was my first ever moon wrasse and...

...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.

I'd previously caught crested grunter on both Okinawa in Japan and Jeju Island in South Korea.

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.

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.

A lovely waterside view of the Singapore skyline.

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. 

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...

1. Anchor Tuskfish
2. Banded Archerfish
3. Barred Mudskipper
4. Bengal Sergeant
5. Bluelined Hind
6. Bluespotted Hind
7. Brownback Trevally
8. Butterfly Whiptail
9. Candystripe Cardinalfish
10. Cantor’s Gudgeon
11. Carpet Eel-Blenny
12. Chinese Damselfish
13. Chocolate Hind
14. Crested Grunter
15. Deep-Bodied Mojarra
16. Diamond Wrasse
17. Dory Snapper
18. False Scorpionfish
19. Fanbellied Filefish
20. Forest Betta
21. Freckled Goatfish
22. Giant Mudskipper
23. Goldstripe Sardinella
24. Herring Scad
25. Honey-Head Damsel
26. Indian Anchovy
27. Indo-Pacific Sergeant
28. Indochinese Spotted Barb
29. Knight Goby
30. Kops’ Glass Perchlet
31. Lagoon Shrimpgoby
32. Lattice Monocle Bream
33. Masked Shrimpgoby
34. Mayan Cichlid
35. Monogrammed Monocle Bream
36. Moon Wrasse
37. Nile Tilapia
38. Notchedfin Threadfin Bream
39. Orange Spotted Grouper
40. Orbiculate Cardinalfish
41. Oriental Sillago
42. Ornate Threadfin Bream
43. Pearly-Spotted Wrasse
44. Pink Ear Emperor
45. Pink-Speckled Shrimpgoby
46. Redbelly Yellowtail Fusilier
47. Redbreasted Maori Wrasse
48. Rib Bar Cardinalfish
49. Saddled Grunt
50. Saw-Jawed Monocle Bream
51. Seagrass Tuskfish
52. Silty Damselfish
53. Silty Wrasse
54. Silver Demoiselle
55. Silver Sillago
56. Sixbar Grouper
57. Spanish Flag Snapper
58. Spottail Needlefish
59. Spotted Archerfish
60. Stripe-nosed Halfbeak
61. Suez Pufferfish
62. Tomato Clownfish
63. Whipfin Ponyfish
64. White Shouldered Whiptail
65. Yellow-spotted Mudskipper
66. Yellowfin Snapper
67. Yellowstripe Scad

These species were also caught by Chris and Lee, but not by me...

68. Banded damselfish
69. Fringe Eyed Flathead
70. Greater Lizardfish
71. Live Sharksucker
    
72. Long Tail Tripodfish
73. Regal Demoiselle
74. Short-nosed Tripodfish
75. Sinuous Gudgeon
76. Vachelli's Glass Perchlet
77. Whitelined Cardinalfish
78. Wolf Herring
79. 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.