The MFF Blog

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

CR - 15/3/08 Pasir Ris FW3

We saw 4 fish being caught in 5 minutes after we arrived at the FW3 pond and without a word, went to the car to get our gear. As the weather was good and there was only 3 anglers there, we knew it would be a good day.


Great weather after a few days of prolonged raining!







A friend who was following us on our weekly recce also eagerly decided to start. So we paid for two rods and quickly starting fishing.


The uncle pasted the stickers on the table instead of our rods as there were so few anglers it was easy to keep track of us.





We used our usual method of spinning with prawn meat, casting from the direct opposite of the prawn pond. Both of our rods caught 1 fish each pretty soon, but we noticed people catching much more from the sides of the keepnet. Unable to bear watching other people catch more than us, we also moved over there.

It proved to be a good decision, as we brought up almost 1 fish per rod every 10 minutes. Within 1 hour, our 2 rods caught a total of 10 fish! We were very excited and thought it was going to be a day of great harvest, but...

In the second hour, action had slowed down tremendously. We only managed to add 5 more to the total count. Sad to say.... In the last hour, all action slowed to a standstill. We caught no more!


The total catch of 15 fish. Total weight 12.5kg.






Everybody at the pond was catching either Taiwan Ngors or Chia Chors, so we were rather surprised when we landed the sole Kim Chew. We were quite satisfied with the catch, although someone told us that there was an angler who had came much earlier and managed to catch 20! We could only hope that such an amazing total catch would happen to us someday as well...

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

CR - Bishan Prawning 03/03/08

Prawn ponds that we knew about include Pasir Ris Park, Pasir Ris FW 1, Pasir Ris FW 3, Yishun Bottle Tree, Farmart and Taman Jurong, but we didn't know there's one at Bishan till recently. Thus we decided to give it a try.


603 Sin Ming Avenue. Beside the Nature Park Golf Driving Range.







We arrived at 1pm and after looking left, right, up, down and around, started to try decimate the population of the prawn pond. The main area is made up of 2 medium-sized ponds back to back with a wide corridor in between. If you walk inwards towards the toilets, there are a couple of smaller ponds there which you can go to as well.


$30 for 3 hours.







The bait provided is also chicken heart, but interestingly, they have cut it up for you and you get one of those white disposable plastic saucers half-filled with bits of chicken heart. Amazingly, there are many small fish swimming around in the ponds. Once in a while you will get a false alarm when they decide to investigate and nibble your bait!

Well, maybe it's because we're not used to the place, plus the fact that it started raining pretty heavily at about 2pm (excuses, excuses... ;p ), we caught less than what we usually can get.


A 'not so grand' total of 26 prawns!







Moreover, our prawns were all quite small with only a few medium ones, making the total weight seem less than usual. To be fair, we did see other anglers there who definately caught more than us and bigger ones too. Maybe they are loyal customers? At the end of the day, we think we will go back the the prawn pond that we frequent, especially when there are prizes to be won... :)

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Report & CR - PRPP 1/3/08

Our first stop was actually the pond at Pasir Ris Farmway Way 3. We reached there around 1:30pm and stayed for 30 over minutes. There were only 5 rods and when we checked out people's catches, we saw only 4 Taiwan Ngors. A string of 3 big ones belonged to one angler and a huge one belonging to another. The rest either had no catch yet or had kept their fish somewhere else? During our entire stay we saw only 2 Pek Tiams landed, but there were 2 instances when lines were burst when the fish dashed under the keepnet stilts. Thus, we decided to take a look at PRPP.

We were surprised to see the fish delivery truck there again! As mentioned in our last PRPP CR, we saw fish being delivered last Monday. Could it be a change in schedule or the owner is getting the truck to come more frequently?


Instead of driving in all the way, the truck parked at the round-about directly in front of a staircase leading to the main pond.





After the fish was weighed, they ran down the staircase and poured the fish into a rectangular plastic trolley with wheels. When the trolley was full, they then pushed it towards the pond.


A trolley full of Taiwan Ngors.







There were about 60 over pieces of fish in that trolley and we saw that 20 were released straight into the pond!


Taiwan Ngors being released into the pond, were there any other kinds earlier?






As we had arrived at 2:30pm, we were unable to tell if other kinds of fish were brought in earlier. Well, I must say we didn't ask anyone lah...
There was only 1 angler there all this while, a young man, but we saw no action. At 2:50pm, one of the uncles working for the pond caught a Taiwan Ngor to demonstrate to a waiting angler that it was time to start fishing. True to his words, the sole angler at the pond landed one immediately after him.

Surprised that the fish woke up so fast this time, we quickly got our gear from the car. When we came back, the uncle told us that the young man had landed 2 more while we were gone! ACKs!
Confident now that the fish had started biting, we started fishing...


We decided to go for it at 3:10PM!










We landed 1 Taiwan Ngor within 5 minutes and a total of 3 fish within 30 minutes. We thought this should be a day even more fruitful than the last. Well, we were right and wrong at the same time. Between 3:45pm to 5:45pm, there was a total of 4 bites but we landed only 1! Sigh.... The first miss, we believe, was due to the hook tearing out. The fish, an ACK, had tried to dash into the keepnets and we had to lock drag and pull it out. This may have torn the lips of the fish as it slipped off the hook just when we were happily going to pull it up.

The second was entirely our fault. We were so busy cutting up bait that we did not notice the float disappearing. By the time we realised the rod was shaking, the Taiwan Ngor had swallowed another angler's bait and he was already fighting the fish...
The third was a simple case of bad timing when striking. No fish too.

Finally, at 6pm, we caught our fifth and final fish - a Kim Chew! Our total catch weighed 6.5kg. The bigger ones should be around 1.2kg each with the Kim Chew around 500g.


Our catch made us wonder if the fish released was like last Monday - 20 Taiwan Ngors, 20 Ang Chor Kees and 10 Kim Chews...







During our time spent there, we witnessed the pond staff pulling out 2 dead fish. We also saw a total of 6 dead fish in the 2 dustbins nearest to us. Our guess is that the pond operator knew the fish was falling sick and not biting, thus he arranged for more frequent deliveries so that anglers could catch those that were healthy and would not go home empty-handed. If this is true, then I would definately support this pond more often!
Blog Widget by LinkWithin