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.

On day two we decided to head to Bedok Jetty, a very popular fishing venue on the south coast of Singapore. Before heading there we visited a supermarket to stock up on plenty of water, some fruit and a packet of frozen raw prawns for Chris and I to use as bait. Lee would be fishing exclusively with lures again.

The jetty was very busy with both anglers and other people out walking or cycling. It proved to be a good choice of venue for us and we racked up quite a few species as the day went on.

Bedok Jetty. A must visit venue in Singapore for species hunting anglers.

I started the day how I’d ended the previous one, by catching a juvenile grouper. As the morning progressed Chris and I steadily added more species to our tallies, fishing small pieces of prawn on small hooks close to the bottom. Lee fished with metal jigs most of the morning as he wanted to catch a queenfish, a species that is targeted frequently by the locals. There were a lot of tiny bait fish around. Every now and then they’d get hit from below, so Lee was hopeful it was his target species that were harassing them.

My first fish of the day was this sixbar grouper.

After a few diamond wrasse I caught this butterfly whiptail.

Chris caught this long tail tripodfish. How cool! I wanted to catch one. 

I caught a monogrammed monocle bream,

…a herring scad…

…and my first pearly-spotted wrasse of the trip. 

Whilst Chris and I were steadily catching fish, Lee was jigging away with various metals and after a few knocks his effort was eventually rewarded with a fish in the shape of a greater lizardfish. 

Not what Lee was hoping for, but he was off the mark at least. 

After a few hours, a rod in a holder on the railings just along from us started bouncing away. We shouted over to the angler who owned it, who had wandered off, to let him know that he had a fish on. After a short fight and with the aid of another angler’s net he landed a nice queenfish. Seeing this, Chris and I set up heavy lure rods and joined Lee to do a bit of jigging for a while. After about an hour with not even a touch though, I switched back to fishing small pieces of prawn on my Rock Rover again! Chris soon joined me and we both caught a few fanbellied filefish amongst other species we’d already had. 

The fanbellied filefish! Such an awesome fish!

Lee was still jigging away, trying to get his lures out near some bait balls further out. I don’t think he was quite able to reach them though although closer in he hooked something that turned out to be a wolf herring, a rather bizarre fish that has the delicate body and scales of a herring and a cavernous mouth full of nasty long teeth. 

Lee’s wolf herring. What a weird fish. 

Into the early afternoon Chris and I continued to catch a reasonable number of fish. Now and then the various wrasse species would be beaten to our bait and if we were lucky we’d catch a new species. There are several sardinella species around Bedok Jetty and some local anglers were jigging sabiki to catch them. I switched to a set of sabiki myself to try and catch some but had no luck. The locals were very proficient at catching them, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what they were doing to catch so many. Later in the session I did catch one on a small piece of prawn though!

Chris caught a few of these rib bar cardinalfish before I finally got one too. 

My prawn caught goldstripe sardinella.

Switching to fishing on the bottom with a running ledger, I was hoping to catch some shrimpgoby. Before I caught any though it produced this freckled goatfish.

Mid afternoon there were a few flashes of lightning, and several seconds later, the sound of thunder broke the relative quiet of the jetty. Looking to the south west, dark clouds were drifting over the multitude of container ships waiting to get into port. Was the Singapore weather about to go from hot and very sweaty to hot and very wet? We would soon find out!

Tight lines, Scott.

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