Sarawak State Library Fishing Competition (Sunday, 29 July 2007)

It had been raining for the past week and the forecast for the weekend was cloudy. When the actual morning came, it was drizzling. 6.30am, I gave John a morning call. The conversation went a bit like this...

Me: John!!!
John: Guess wat? I just woke up!!! I set the alarm at 5.30am but I didn't hear it.
Me: Knn... Ok! I wait for you.

15 minutes later, John arrived. After I bundled my fishing tackle into his car, we were on our way. This was when Chen called...

Chen: Where are you guys?
Me: On the way... around Wood House area.
Chen: Am waiting at KY Cafe.
Me: Ok! Please order kolomee for me and John.
Chen: Wat you want?
Me: John, wat you want?
John: I want either kuitiaw or beehoon.
Me: Pls order kolomee for me and either kuitiaw or beehon for John.
Chen: Ok! Ok!

We met up at KY, broke our fast and then drove to the library taking the only toll road in kuching. When we reached there... there we already scores of people lining sporadically around the lake. John went to register while I "booked" our fishing spot. There were splashes near our parking spot, so I hurried to rig my setup. I had with me a 10ft pole and a spinning set. Managed to take ONE picture of the location before it started to rain... and rained it did for the duration of the competition, which was 4 hours.

We had with us, live shrimp, bread, chicken feed and "fish cookies" as bait... and soon we were catching fish... but they were small. Nope... they were not small, they were TINY!!! 3 - 4 inches LOHAN aka FlowerHorn. The odd catches by us, throughout the event was a common barb, a tinfoil barb and a 50g udang galah. Haha.

Overall, I had fun... for a day out in the sun... rain with friends, and that is the important thing (for me anyways)

Did not stay behind for the prize giving ceremony, but we heard that the biggest catch for the competition was an almost 2kg toman!!!

Apologies for lack of pictures as it was raining and my camera was not waterproof.

points update

my latest outing, i caught some fishes from category B & C. all in all, my catch was about 1.5kg. however, i will just treat the catch as category C fish, so my points for last weekend fishing was 1.5. adding that to my previous total...
53.25 + 1.50 = 54.75

Legal or Illegal?

As u all know, over the weekend I went fishing at Batang Rambungan. This is what I saw being done to the mangrove trees that lined the bank of Batang Rambunagan. I would just like to know, is this legal or illegal? If it is legal, then can then I'd like to ask the government authority, why is the land clearing done right by the river bank. Shouldn't there be a buffer zone of some sort? If it is illegal, then which government authority should take action?

The Return to Batang Rambungan - 14 July 2007

It all started from an sms invitation from Edwin and then plans were made to revisit Batang Rambungan. This place used to be my playground, when I just got started with saltwater fishing.

Came Saturday morning, I went to buy the pre-ordered live prawns and made my way to Edwin’s house. After unloading my stuff to Edwin’s 4x4, Andrew arrived. Once he got his stuff loaded, we made our way to Green Road for kolomee breakfast.

9am, we reached the jetty. And by 9.15am, we made our way to the first lubuk. Here, I caught 2 red coral fish about 150gram each. Edwin caught his 800gram GT here. Andrew was still fishless. When the water stopped moving, we moved to another spot. Here I caught a few breams and a gopeng. Sand flies were making a feast out of us here. So we left for another spot. Over there, we caught some more fish like breams, angcho and gopeng. The fish weren’t big, mostly around 200gram. Just that 2 of the breams were bigger, around 500gram each.

At the last spot, to our surprise, we caught 2 bebolos aka whiting. Over here, the champ was determined. It had to be Edwin. Within 30 minutes, he managed to land 2 numbers of 1kg+ grade A grouper. After that, we decided to call it a day and plan to be back there again soon.

sg pinang 777 with charles, kathryn and jeremy

charles smsed when i was at bintulu on official business. he said he's read my blog and that he knows sharma. we decided to met up today to do some fishing. i had suggest 2 locations. sg. pinang (which has never dissapointed me so far) or kpg. jaya bakti. charles picked the former. so around 2pm today, we met up at angler's friend tackle shop. charles brought along his girlfriend, kathryn and jeremy (kathryn's brother). then i led the way to sg. pinang.

weather was cloudy but fine. so we set about fishing at one of the allowed pond. i hv been to sg. pinang many times so i knew where to look for fish. within minutes i caught a 250g betutu with my trusted berkley blade dancer. charles, kathryn and jeremy, they were using softplastics and duel lures. i switched to spinner bait but to no avail. saw some commotion at the place where i caught my 1st fish and decided to check out the place with my BBD again. true enough, another 250g betutu was landed.

by now, the wind had picked up and droplets of rain had started to fall. we decided to take shelter. we made it to the shelter just when it poured... and poured hard it did for about 30 minutes. just as the rain was about to die down, 3 more fishos turned up. i knew one of them, Wee.

when the sky cleared, we returned to our agenda for the day. FISHING!!! by now, charles, kathryn and jeremy had all switched to soft plastics whereas i was still using my BBD and spinner bait. caught 2 more betutu with the BBD... 250g and 750g respectively. then it was jeremy's turn to catch a betutu with sp. by now, i had lost count on who caught what fish. kathryn caught a couple of betutu and jeremy caught another, all on sp (i think). charles however was still fishless.

then came the surprise catch, by kathryn!!! she decided to work her sp at one of the smaller rectangle pond and was rewarded with a fiesty 2kg+ haruan. by now, charles was feeling the heat. zero fish for him. i had also switched to sp, courtesy of charles. i had many takes on my sp... but there were no solid hook-ups. the fish seems to be attacking the sp's tail so when i strike, i just pulled the sp from their mouth. however, i got a lucky break and managed to land a 1kg haruan using sp for the first time.

we continued to fish until it was dark. after kathryn got another betutu, we decided to call it a day. all in all, the results were... a) charles zero (sorry charles!!!) b) jeremy (3 betutu) c) kathryn ( 1 HUGEASS haruan + 3 betutu) and me (1 haruan + 4 betutu)

pleasant fishing with u guys!!! and thanx for the sp charles!!!

points update.

4 ketutu, 1.5kg x 3 x 2 = 9.0
1 haruan, 1.0kg x 2 x 2 = 4.0
total points this weekend = 13.0

total accumulated points to date = 40.25 + 13.0 = 53.25

sematan (16-17 june) - more pix (my bounty)

Another First

went fishing on 30 june 2007 with noel. decided to stock-up my aquarium with "pipi merah", so naturally, i decided that we should go visit kpg chupak again. besides, noel has not been there before.

around 1.45pm, noel arrived at my place to fetch me. he had also bought RM1 worth of live shrimp as bait. we headed of to our destination using the samarahan-serian road. when we almost reached kpg chupak, i told noel of a "fishy" looking river which i never had the chance to fish at. reaching the river, i managed to learn of the name... sg s***n. as it had not been raining the past few days prior to this trip, the water in sg s***n was flowing clamly, the dark water shows that it was quite deep and both noel and i decided to fish there for a while. in the beginning i tried casting, but the weedless spoon that i used, i didn't present it very well, so i didn't get any bite. then i decided to try bottom fishing. i cast to the middle of the lubuk and waited. it was very quiet. no action at all. noel was also getting bored and had already packed his fishing equipment to proceed to our main destination. i decided to follow suit. picked up my rod. give it a good tug and started to reel in the line. it was when i felt some weight at the end of the line. it was give a little fight, but nothing my ryobi rod and shimano slade 2500, spooled with 12lb monoline can't handle. as the fish appear from the depth, i could see a silvery flash. as it got closer, i realised that it was a fish that i had never caught before. it was a 6" sebarau which i estimated to be around 200g. it was pure beauty!!!
i was so proud of this catch that i took quite a few pictures with it, with noel's help. now that i know sg s***n got sebbies and will definitely be back for more action there.

sebbie being a top class fish = 3.0 points per kg

so... 0.2 x 3.0 = 0.6 points

overall pionts update for me is 39.65 + 0.6 = 40.25

The Infamous SEBARAU!!! (some facts)

Family:- Cyprinidae

English Name:- Carp

Scientific Name:- Hampala Macrolepidota

Size:- Average size of 10 - 20 cm and can grow to more than 40 cm in length and weighs more than 5 kg.

Morphology:- Presence of a black band running vertically from the dorsal fin downwards to the belly, but may disappear when the fish is more than 1 kg. The dorsal fin and the caudal fin lobes have black stripes and these remains until adult. Body is silverfish-grey in colour.

Biology:- The fish spawn in the upstream of the rivers. The young either dominate the rivers or move into the lake. Fish have been photographed climbing rapids to reach their spawning ground. Diet consists of smaller fish, shrimps and insects.

Distribution:- Mostly confined to rivers but is also present in lakes.