Catch report from jurong island

I was called upon to organize a fishing trip for my friend’s friends and they are all new to fishing. I quickly suggest to them to try day fishing off tekong area as the catch was pretty good over the past few weeks. But all of them prefer to fish at night so there is only one option which is to fish ard southern island or off Jurong Island near the near firing area.

The night they chose was a tough and challenging one as the current is very strong from evening to the next day early morning. So I guess I have to dig up all my heavy tackle for them. We managed to buy 2kg of kelong sotong which in the end we used only half a kg.

Finding the correct boat was tough as it is hard to find a boat to fit 9 ppl in it. Finally one of my friend managed to get a boat at from pandan river and I cant remember his name, it is a malay boatman.

Anyway we met up in the evening and headed out to our first spot off tuas reclaim land breakwaters as we can’t fish in the open channel as the current was still very strong. The water is pretty calm and we managed to get more than 30 pics of sotong. All of them had fun catching them too. I had only 4 heavy rods and decided to lend my rods to them and I will settle for handline.

We spent the whole night ard the breakwaters and managed only 3 ack ard 1kg. However nothing was landed on rods, all on handline only. 2 by the capt and one by me. Ard 5am we decided to move out to the open waters near the live firing area. I got a big bite shortly after we anchored but I loss the fish as I did not set the hook properly. Mins later the capt bought up 1 ack ard 3kg. Wat a waste!!!! I hooked up another fresh sotong and was praying hard to God for another chance. True enough the bite came and the fish is on. After putting out a good fight on my handline, a 3kg plus ack was hauled up, this woke everyone and everyone started to fish. However dog fish decided to pay some of us a visit.

Suddenly one of my friends was hooked onto a monster that was peeling his line in an alarming rate. I knew was something real big as my charter special will only get bullied if the fish is above 10kg. The way the fish fight don’t seems to be a ray but looks more like a chermin to me as it keeps on making strong runs. Finally after 20 min of fight, we saw some colour, it was sliver but alittle longish so chermin is out. Could it be threadfin? Hahaha… it was a duri aka marine catfish. This is the biggest marine catfish I seen so far. I est it ard 12-14kg.

Anyone have any other guess?

Overall catch
Ack 5 ( 3 1kg, 2 3kg) all on handline
Duri 12kg
A few kelong chi, dog fish

I guess the most traditional method maybe the best method after all.

On the whole with such a strong current night we still managed to bring out a number of decent catch, I feel it is a good outing. I guess my friends had a great time talking cock, catch sotong and witnessing big fishes been caught. I really enjoy the company and I hope I had slowly poisoned them with some fishing’s drugs. One day they will be like us been addicted to fishing hehhe!!!

My DC is finally back after it died on me last week. I will upload the pics soon. cheers Samuel