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.
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| Pink speckled shrimpgoby are awesome. My personal favourite shrimpgoby! |
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| Just look at those beautiful markings! |
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| 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!
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| 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. |
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| 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! |
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| 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.
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| This is Kop’s glass perchlet, I caught lots of these whilst fishing out on Pulau Ubin last year. |
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| After adding white shouldered whiptail,.. |
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| …and silty wrasse to my trip’s tally,.. |
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| …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.
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| 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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