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 6 continued.

On our way back to the ferry pier on Pulau Ubin we walked through an area that had some nice red flowers and there were quite a few rather large, deep red dragonfly flying about. Lee managed to creep up on one and got a good photograph.

Lovely colourful flowers.

The dragonfly was a deep red colour but its wing tips were transparent. Was this an evolutionary trick to make prey think they were a butterfly or a flower perhaps? They are one of nature’s most efficient and vicious predators. 

We carried on walking back to the pier and arrived there with plenty of time to spare, so we did a spot of fishing from a small sandy beach nearby that had with some rocks on it that went out into the water. The bottom was also a mixture of sand and rock and as a result there were plenty of anchor tuskfish, seagrass tuskfish, diamond wrasse and pink ear emperor around. We also managed to pull out a couple of species that added to our tally for the trip.

We caught quite a few of these pink ear emperor.

There were a few of these aggressive little Kop’s glass perchlet in the very shallow water next to the rocks where the waves were gently breaking.

Casting out over the sandy patches produced a few silver sillago.

Before we left, we had a few last casts straight down the side of the ferry pier itself. As well as some notchfin threadfin bream and diamond wrasse I caught another new species before the ferry captain told us it was time to go.

My first white shouldered whiptail. A bonus new species just before we left Pulau Ubin.  

Soon back on the mainland we decided to have a short session fishing from a couple of sandy beaches near the ferry terminal before heading back to the hotel. These only produced a few more silver sillago, and they stopped biting once it began to get dark, but the sunset was nice.

A beautiful sunset over Pulau Ubin. 

Over dinner and beers we decided to return to the Southern Islands the following day, our last day in Singapore. It had proved to be the most productive place we had fished, and I was keen to see a little more of the Southern Islands the second time around.

Tight lines, Scott.

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Species hunting adventures in Singapore: Day 1.

Last month I flew out to Singapore with two of my mates, Chris and Lee, for a week of sweating profusely in the country's ridiculous, highly humid climate whilst trying to do some fishing. Singapore is home to hundreds of different species, so I was very excited to see how many I could catch. 

After a long flight from Heathrow, where Chris and I almost missed our connection due to a delayed flight from Edinburgh and a ludicrously long wait at the baggage belts in domestic arrivals, which resulted in a mad dash from Terminal 5 to Terminal 2, just making the check in desk with a minute to spare, we arrived at our hotel located in the Geylang area at about 10:00 on Wednesday the 21st. Our taxi driver, on the way there from the airport, insisted that we knew fine well that Geylang was the location of a large red-light district, despite us telling him repeatedly that it was merely the most affordable accommodation we found, and we were there only to fish for a week! 

After checking in, having a badly needed shower and getting changed, we jumped in another taxi, and went fishing at a few spots along the South Marina Promenade. Chris and I fished with Angleworm and Isome on a drop shot rig, whilst Lee tried searching the water column with small metal jigs and soft plastics on jigheads. Of course, before going, I'd done some research into the most likely species we would encounter and sure enough some of the most common ones were the first ones we caught.

The south coast of Singapore on a hot, sticky day. As it turns out, that’s pretty normal weather for Singapore.

My first fish of the trip was this seagrass tuskfish. Tuskfish are a subgroup of the wrasse family. They have quite prominent tusk like teeth, although they're not visible in this photo.

This was soon followed by lots of anchor tuskfish, they would turn out to be the much more commonly caught of the two species.

The third species I caught was this diamond wrasse, another very common species in shallow rocky areas. Also known as the bubblefin wrasse. 

After catching quite a few of the three wrasse species above, Chris caught a couple of small Spanish Flag snapper and I then caught this small dory snapper.

Chris and I were fishing close to the bottom. Lee searched the water column and wasn't catching many fish. Over several trips with Lee I’ve gotten used to this, he knows what he enjoys and through perseverance usually catches some pretty cool fish,..

...like this fringe eyed flathead.

After moving around a few times, we ended up hiding in the shade of some trees. We were all still sweating a lot and were also probably starting to feel a bit of jet lag kicking in. We soldiered on for a while longer though and were rewarded with a few more fish.

These pink ear emperor were pretty common.

I caught a solitary notchfin threadfin bream.

As well as another small snapper, this one is a yellowfin snapper.

I also caught my first grouper species of the trip when this small chocolate hind took my piece of angleworm.

By the early evening, the action had slowed down, and we had run out of bottled water. We had probably lost more water through perspiration than we had drank, so we desperately needed to rehydrate, so we packed up and headed back to the hotel. The air conditioning in our rooms was excellent thankfully and after another refreshing cold shower we headed out in the evening to explore the area, wandering around, eating some tasty food and washing it down with a few ice cold beers. It hadn’t been a bad start to our trip on the species hunting front, although I had managed to get sunburned on my left calf. I must have missed the area when applying my sun cream. Oops!

Tight lines, Scott.

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