More species hunting adventures in Singapore: Part 7.

On the morning of the last day of our holiday, we got up quite early and took a Grab taxi to Bedok Jetty. As we arrived, a local angler caught an impressive wolf herring on a live bait. My mate Lee caught a small one when we visited Bedok Jetty last year, but this thing was huge and had a nasty set of teeth on it!

Wolf herring, not the most attractive fish in the sea, that's for sure!

Setting up my rod under the first shelter on the jetty, mainly because it looked like it was about to start raining at any moment, I started off by tying on a set of sabiki. The lady who had caught the wolf herring tried to sell me a set of her handmade ones. I'd watched her pull up several full sets of sardinella using them whilst I got my own rod set up, but I decided to try fishing with my own ones. There is definitely a knack to catching sardinella using sabiki. A knack that the lady had clearly mastered, as I watched her repeatedly pull up five or six almost every drop whilst a teenager on my other side, also using a set of her sabiki only caught one or two. I struggled to catch any on my shop bought rig, but eventually landed a one or two a couple of times.

My first fringescale sardinella. The locals target various species of sardinella, using one or two as bait and taking the rest home to eat.

Switching to fishing small chunks of prawn close to the bottom, I caught a few pink ear emperor and a diamond wrasse before adding three more species to my tally. None of them were new to me, but the third was my fourth shrimpgoby species of the trip. I love shrimpgoby, there's just something about them!

First up was a juvenile yellowfin snapper,..

...which was followed by a monogrammed monocle bream,..

...and then I caught this lovely masked shrimpgoby.

Just look at some of the colourful markings on those fins!

At this point, we decided to move to a new spot, and as I was keen to catch some tripodfish. Having been given some great information on exactly where to try, we moved up to a spot close to the end of the jetty. Not long after we sat down, it started raining, but Lillian had brought a large umbrella, so we sheltered underneath it. There were other anglers fishing either side of us who had lines out, so I couldn't quite fish the exact area I had been told to, but I was able to drop my rig in reasonably close to it. My first drop produced another wonderfully colourful shrimpgoby.

A peacock shrimpgoby, with its reflective, almost metallic blue spotting. Simply stunning!

Casting out and waiting for a short period, if I didn’t get any bites, I’d slowly bump my running ledger rig along the bottom, repeating this process until something hit my bait. This produced a few oriental sillago and my bait also got stripped a few times.

I'm not sure why, but I just don't find sillago that interesting.

Feeling slightly frustrated, I switched to a slightly smaller hook and tiny pieces of prawn. I should have done this sooner, as this slight tweak worked a treat, and saw me catching two more new species in consecutive casts.

The first was this long-tail tripodfish.

Followed shortly afterwards by my first ever longspine ponyfish.

Before we left, we decided to try one last spot, right at the end of the jetty on its left-hand arm. This produced a few butterfly whiptail, and then the last addition to my species tally of the entire trip.

The colouration of butterfly whiptail can vary, but the small black dot at the root of the tail encircled with a V is the feature to look for.

This lattice monocle bream was my 114th species of the trip. A total I was very happy with!

After about a dozen "last casts", I ran out of bait, but Lillian found a scrap of dried up prawn on the ground and told me to have one last "last cast". The dehydrated scrap proved to be a tough bait for the fish to easily strip off, and after missing a few bites, I caught my last fish of the trip. It just happened to be the same species as the very first fish of the trip, caught three weeks earlier when we visited Bedok Jetty. Time flies when you're having species hunting fun!

This pink ear emperor was a nice fish to finish off my Asian species hunt!

Packing away my tackle for the final time, we walked back to the car park where we had been dropped off and took another Grab taxi up to Mandai Wildlife Reserve, where we spent a few hours exploring Bird Paradise. It was raining while we were there, so some of the birds were taking shelter, but enough were out that the experience was still enjoyable.

Who doesn’t love penguins,..

…flamingoes,..

…colourful parrots,..

...and birds that look a bit like Robert Smith of The Cure? Lillian is a lifelong fan, but somehow didn't see the likeness.

In the evening, we headed out for a nice meal at BBQ Box, just around the corner from our hotel. Way too many tasty grilled skewers and a few delicious salads were washed down with a huge jug of ice-cold lemon and lime tea. With a long day of travelling to do the following day, we didn't want to be suffering with a hangover!

Just a small selection of delicious grilled meat and seafood skewers we enjoyed.

Sliced lotus root and smashed cucumber salad. A balanced diet is important, after all.

The following morning, we returned to Changi Airport, the fourth time we had used it in three weeks! Killing some time before we had to board our flight back to the UK, we visited its butterfly garden! My friend Nick had tasked us with getting photographs of ten different species of tropical butterflies whilst we were away, and we had failed miserably! We’d seen hundreds, but they don’t tend to sit still long enough for a photo in the wild. In the butterfly garden, a couple were more than happy to pose.

This is a common rose.

This is a clipper.

Boarding the plane home at the end of a holiday is always tinged with sadness, but all good things must come to an end. Lillian and I both love visiting Asia, and I love species hunting there. Visiting Singapore, Cambodia and Thailand, we’d had an amazing time and have decided to return to Japan next November for another three wek adventure. We’ll be revisiting some of the places we’ve been to during three previous trips, as well as some new places. As always, I'll be doing a spot of species hunting too.

My fishing sessions had been enjoyable and very productive. Here's a list of the 114 species I caught over the duration of the trip, with all the new species in bold.

1. Anchor Tuskfish
2. Argus Wrasse
3. Banded Archerfish
4. Banded Grunter
5. Banded Sergeant
6. Banded Silver Biddy
7. Barred Mudskipper
8. Bigeye Cusk
9. Bigeye Trevelly
10. Black-spotted Snubnose Goby
11. Blackline Rasbora
12. Blackspot Sargeant
13. Bluegill Longfin
14. Bluelined Hind
15. Brownstripe Red Snapper
    
16. Butterfly Whiptail
17. Candystripe Cardinalfish
18. Cantor’s Gudgeon
19. Checkerboard Wrasse
20. Chinese Demoiselle
21. Chocolate Hind
22. Common Silver Biddy
23. Congaturi Halfbeak
24. Cook’s Cardinalfish
25. Crested Grunter
26. Decorated Ponyfish
27. Diamond Wrasse
28. Dory Snapper
29. Duskytail Grouper
30. False Scorpionfish
31. Fanbellied Filefish
32. Flame Cardinalfish
33. Forest Betta
34. Fringescale Sardinella
35. Giant Mudskipper
36. Giant Trevally
37. Goldlined Sweetlip
38. Green Puller
    
39. Grey Demoiselle
40. Harry Hotlips
41. Houndfish
42. Humpback Cardinal
43. Humpbacked Cardinalfish
44. Indo-Pacific Sergeant
45. Indochinese Spotted Barb
46. Iridescent Shark Catfish
47. Jansen’s Wrasse
48. Javaen Barb
49. Javan Ricefish
50. Javelin Grunter
51. Knight Goby
52. Kop’s Glass Perchlet
53. Lattice Monocle Bream
54. Long-tail Tripodfish
    
55. Longspine Ponyfish
56. Lunartail Puffer
57. Malayan Tiger Barb
58. Mangrove Jack
59. Marble Goby
60. Masked Shrimpgoby
61. Mayan Cichlid
62. Minute Mudskipper
63. Monogrammed Monocle Bream
64. Moon Wrasse
65. Mottled Spinefoot
66. Nile Tilapia
67. Obscure Damsel
68. Ochre-striped Cardinalfish
69. One-spot Snapper
70. Onespot Demoiselle
    
71. Orbiculate Cardinalfish
72. Oriental Sillago
73. Ornate Goby
74. Pacific Dusky Wrasse
75. Pale Rasbora
76. Peacock Shrimpgoby
77. Pearly-spotted Wrasse
78. Pink Ear Emperor
79. Pink-Speckled Shrimpgoby
80. Red Tilapia
81. Redbelly Yellowtail Fusilier
82. Redcoat
83. Rib Bar Cardinalfish
84. Robust Mangrove Goby
85. Scissortail Rasbora
86. Siamese Glassfish
87. Silty Wrasse
88. Silver Demoiselle
89. Silver Sillago
90. Spanish Flag Snapper
91. Spectacled Sandgoby
    
92. Streaky Rockskipper
93. Stripe-nosed Halfbeak
94. Striped Snakehead
95. Striped Snapper
96. Sulphur Goatfish
97. Threadfin Acara
98. Three-spot Cardinalfish
99. Threespot Dascyllus
100. Tiger Barb
101. Timor Wrasse
102. Toothpony
     
103. Tropical Sand Goby
104. Two Spot Demoiselle
105. Two-lined Monocle Bream
106. Vachelli’s Glass Perchlet
107. Weber’s Chromis
108. Western Mosquitofish
109. Whipfin Silver-biddy
110. White Shouldered Whiptail
111. Whitecheek Monocle Bream
112. Yellow Banded Damselfish
113. Yellowfin Snapper
114. Yellowfin Surgeonfish

Adding the new species to the list of all the species I've ever caught, when I got back, I realised that I had passed the five hundred mark. A great achievement that I'm very proud of. Over the coming years, I'd like to try to hit one thousand eventually!

Tight lines, Scott.

Acknowledgments:

I'd like to thank fellow species hunters Luke and Arthur for their advice on fishing various venues around Phuket before the trip. It was very useful!

Most of all though, I'd yet again like to thank fellow species hunter Jiayuan for his invaluable help throughout the duration of my trip. Whether it be information on the best places to try for certain species, or helping to identify some of the fish I'd caught, his knowledge was incredibly useful and equally impressive! We kept in touch throughout pretty much my entire trip. This, despite the fact he was busy with university exams and projects. Sadly, his academic commitments meant that we didn't get the chance to meet up during either of the Singapore phases of our adventure, which I would have loved. Hopefully, the next time I'm in Singapore we can go species hunting together!

More species hunting adventures in Singapore: Part 6.

Arriving back in Singapore late in the afternoon, it was raining heavily, and we were both pretty hungry, so instead of going straight to our hotel, risking getting soaked, we got off of the MRT at Paya Lebar and went to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant in the retail mall that's directly connected to the station. We must have underestimated how hungry we both were, because between the two of us, we ate our way through about thirty plates! Amongst my selections, I had two favourites.

The marinated baby octopus was delicious,...

...and a simple, clean, wakame seaweed salad was very nice too. 

Riding the MRT along to Kallang, the rain had thankfully eased off. Checking in to our hotel, the same one we'd stayed in at the beginning of our trip, we decided to have a nap. Partly due to the early start we'd had, and also probably due to overeating. When we woke up a few hours later, we caught the MRT down to Marina South Pier and I had a couple of hours targeting nocturnal species. Cardinalfish were my main target, but I was also hopeful that some squirrelfish might be present. After catching a couple of candystripe cardinalfish, I got a much more aggressive take and the culprit shot off out into deeper water. It was a squirrelfish, and for a small fish, I was surprised that it put up as decent a scrap as it did.

This redcoat was my first ever squirrelfish species. They are venomous, so it was handled with care.

As I continued fishing, the bites weren't coming thick and fast but instead fairly sporadically. I then caught a nice Spanish flag snapper that also took my bait very aggressively and charged off. Putting up a spirited fight, it was great fun on ultralight tackle.

Not huge, but I think it's the biggest Spanish flag snapper I've ever caught.

Pleased with the way the session was unfolding, I was confident that eventually I'd catch a new species of cardinalfish before too long, as several are found in the area. We moved to a second spot, but the ground there was saturated with water from the downpour earlier in the afternoon, so we quickly moved back to nearby the first spot. Dropping my bait down again, I didn't get a bite for a while, but after a while I felt a very subtle take and lifted into something much bigger that immediately started stripping line from my reel at an alarming rate. It certainly wasn’t a cardinalfish! Applying some pressure to stop the fish potentially getting down into a gap in the boulders, luckily it instead swam out away from the wall I was fishing from into open water. It made a few more surging runs midwater, before it tired and I managed to bring it to the surface. Suddenly realising that my extendable net was back in the hotel, I had a decision to make, either swing the fish up with my rod, or put my rod down and try to hand line it up. I quickly decided just to go for the first option! Getting the tip of my rod as low as I could, I wound up my drag, and with one motion, lifted it up, over the railings and onto the grass behind me!

My first ever goldlined sweetlips was a cracker!

I admire the fish one last time before releasing it. 

My heart was pounding for a while after that. On a high, I carried on fishing, and after moving to a different spot I caught a couple of new species of cardinalfish almost straight away and both were nice big specimens too! It really had turned into an amazing nighttime session!

My first ever ochre-striped cardinalfish was shortly followed by,..

...my first ever three-spot cardinalfish!

Having achieved my goals for the session, and also been rewarded with the unexpected capture of the goldlined sweetlips, I decided to call it a night. In the morning, we were going to head back to Bedok Jetty for my last fishing session of the trip. The one I'd just enjoyed, would take some beating!

Tight lines, Scott.

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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 humpback cardinal. 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.

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More species hunting adventures in Singapore: Part 4.

On the fourth day of our time in Singapore, we caught the ferry over to St John’s Island. Another must visit place for any species hunting angler who visits Singapore in my opinion. Lillian was keen to do some fishing, so I set her up with a Rock Rover of her own. Only a short distance from the landing pier, we kicked the session off by targeting pink speckled shrimpgoby, ledgering small pieces of prawn on the bottom. At this point, I realised that I’d left my bait scissors next to the hotel bathroom sink, which would make cutting up my prawns into nice neat tiny pieces almost impossible, so I’d just have to improvise for the rest of the day. That said, I was still quite annoyed with myself! Anyway, the area we fished over was evidently still home to a very healthy population of pink speckled shrimpgoby, as we both caught one on our first cast. After catching a few more, admiring their amazing markings before popping them back again, we moved on to a second spot nearby.

Pink speckled shrimpgoby are awesome. My personal favourite shrimpgoby!

Just look at those beautiful markings!

It was official. Lillian had joined the pink speckled shrimpgoby fan club!

Arriving at my second chosen spot, I quickly spotted one of the species I had caught there during my visits to St John’s Island the previous year, as well as a species that I had spotted, but had failed to catch. At this point, Lillian declared that she didn't want to fish any more, telling me that it was too hot, and also, that I made fishing and catching fish look much easier than it actually was! I took this as a compliment of sorts, but was slightly disappointed that I’d probably be fishing solo for the rest of the day. As I started fishing again, she seemed quite content to watch and point out fish to me. I was happy that at least she had given it a go, caught a cool species and also had a new-found appreciation for the finely tuned skill set I’ve built up over the years!

The first species I caught at the second spot was orbiculate cardinalfish. Hanging around some drifting debris, they were very obliging when presented with a chunk of prawn. Slow moving, it was also easy to avoid catching them once I'd added them to my tally.

Before too long, a few anchor tuskfish appeared from down amongst the rocks to attack my bait. Fast and very aggressive, they kept darting out and stealing the bait from my intended target!

Eventually, I managed to present my bait close enough to a few yellow banded damselfish for them to get an opportunity to eat it! After striking too soon, pulling the hook out of their mouths a couple of times, I managed to hook one.

Having successfully caught my first new species of the day, I then turned my attention to a shoal of nearby glassfish. Setting up my tanago rod with a simple split shot rig and casting a tiny piece of prawn into the shoal, I quickly caught a few. Popppng them into my viewing tank I quickly realised I had caught two different species, one I recognised from last year's trip to Singapore and a second that was new to me.

This is Kop’s glass perchlet, I caught lots of these whilst fishing out on Pulau Ubin last year.

This tiny transparent fish was my first ever Vachelli’s glass perchlet.

Happy enough with the start to the day, we decided to head over to the causeway joining St John's Island to Lazarus Island. By this point it was very hot, and despite a slight breeze blowing, I was finding the heat pretty hard to bear. I'd also forgotten how unforgiving the reef there could be. Fishing closer in to try to minimise tackle losses, some small damselfish were rapidly and expertly stripping my bait. To make matters worse, hacking my prawns up with my multi tool was producing a mushy paste. Not ideal for achieving a bait presentation that would last a little bit longer!

I think it was the hottest day of the trip so far. Probably not very clever being out fishing in it. Lillian had wisely brought an umbrella, so at least she was able to sit in the shade as I stubbornly soldiered on.

I added a few species to my trip tally, and spotted some Indo-Pacific sergeant that I tried to catch. The smaller damselfish had other ideas, were much more aggressive, and kept stripping my bait within seconds! Clearly there was a large shoal of the much less colourful damselfish down there. Switching to a tiny hook, I started catching the species responsible.

After adding white shouldered whiptail,..

…and silty wrasse to my trip’s tally,..

…I discovered that the super efficient bait strippers were a shoal of silver demoiselle.

Catching the silver demoiselle became slightly annoying, so I began casting further out, but this just resulted in multiple lost rigs. Moving around, constantly rebaiting, or tying up rigs in the intense heat soon became very frustrating, so we walked around to a life-saving, but quite expensive, shipping container shop. A fairly new addition to the Islands, that wasn't there when I visited last year, it was well stocked, so we got some ice creams, two large bottles of ice-cold drinks and found a shady spot near the Seringat Island Pier to relax out of the sun and enjoy them. The floating pontoon had several boats moored to it, so I fished down the wall, over the railing in front of where we were chilling out. The bottom was quite rocky, and I lost a few rigs pretty quickly. I persevered and caught a few fish, but only one species that I hadn’t caught already.

My first Spanish flag snapper of the trip.

Despite the intense heat, which had made fishing rather uncomfortable, time had flown quite quickly, and before we knew it, the time had come for us to head back around to the landing pier on St John’s Island to board the last boat back to the mainland. I may have toiled in the heat and not caught as many species as I’d have liked, but I had still added a few more to my tally, including a couple of new ones. I think the next time I'm in Singapore, I'll make any trip over to the Southern Islands when it's a little bit cooler if possible, perhaps even resorting to going over and spending the night!

Tight lines, Scott.

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