4:15am and the alarm is ringing in my ears. I could still hear the sky grumbling and the odd flash of light still lit up the distant sky. Mmmmm, that still does not look good! See how it is after a coffee.
The coffee didn’t make the sky any better, so I thought I’d see how it looked from the meeting place car park. On route to the car park, a few drops of rain appeared on the windscreen. “Must be off the trees” I hoped. But then a few more drops appeared and before long, it was raining properly. When I arrived at the car park, Sailfish was just parking, so at least we could moan about the weather together!
Sailfish had kindly brought breakfast and coffee! What a nice guy!
After breakfast, the rain was still falling, so we decided to get the kayaks ready!!
As we got down to the beach, the rain miraculously started to ease and by the time we were in the kayaks, it had stopped altogether. Yippeeee!!
It was now 6am and we paddled off to the first spot. After a bit of lure throwing here, nothing had taken the lures, so we decided to move on to another spot.
I dropped a Stump Jumper down and slowly trolled it along behind the yak. 5 minutes later, the yak was pulled and I could feel a fish was on. This was a fighter and line was being pulled off quite a tight drag. The kayak was turned and being pulled by the fish, which was now heading out to sea. So I fought a bit harder and cranked up until I could see some colour. The fish burst through the surface – BARRACUDA!!!!! Down it went and came thrashing back on the surface again. Down again and up like a torpedo it jumped clear of the water. After a couple more acrobatic jumps, to started to tire and was now circling under the yak.
No way am I gonna net this, so reached for the grips and brought it closer. I have a lot of respect for cuda teeth! I once lifted a 15kg cuda up for a foto. The fish had been on ice for a day so was definitely dead, but as I took my fingers out from its gills, someone told me I was bleeding. The teeth had cut straight through my fingernail and down to the bone!
Anyway, I turned its head and managed to get a good grip. GOTCHA!!! YAAAHOOOOO!!!
Once a few photo’s had been taken, I speared it back into the water. It came back up for a moment and I was worried it might not make it, but after a few swishes of its tail, it shot off back into the murky sea.
It did leave some cuda crap on my fish finder tho…
Off to the next spot.
We had been luring and moving around to different spots for a while. I was playing with the reel now to try and get the setting right – the reel had a soaking while I was dealing with the cuda! I managed to get a long cast and pulled the lure to the bottom. BANG!!!! FISH ON!!!! This one was a good fish and was pulling line off a full drag.
But then, horror of horrors…..STUCK! The fish had managed to find a hole and gone in. As I reeled in, the yak came toward the line entry and I could feel the line coming off the rocks. A little more and I was over the top. As I carried on over the top, down went the rod tip and the fish was out. Pumping the rod, the fish cleared the rocks and started to come up. As it neared the surface, it came up snarling and opened up nicely for the grips to grab hold. GOTCHA!!! YAAAHOOOOO!!!
A look at the line revealed that I had nearly lost this fish…
It was supposed to be Sailfish’s turn, but no-one told the fish that!
Sailfish was soon into a good fish, but it spat the lure as it came closer to the surface.
As we headed off to our next spot, the water began to get very cloudy and a lot of debris was floating around. The conditions were not looking good for fish, so we crossed the channel to try our luck on the other side.
A storm was brewing over Changi, but luckily was passing over to Malaysia and we were still paddling in sunshine.
The wind was now blowing off shore and the tide was soon to change. After struggling with wind and tide against us, we headed on home.
I haven’t been this tired from paddling since I started tho!!
Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did!
Many thanks to Sailfish for a great trip – after a great breakfast & coffee!!!
Singapore fishing is fun!!
Cheers,
Ian
