We're Off to Belum!

Even though the fishing tackle show in KL has been cancelled, we will still make our way up on Wednesday to Perak, Belum Rainforest Resort and then to the Pet Expo in KL. So we'll only be back on Sunday 5th July.

Look out for our posts on Monday!

The King of Crabs

Singaporeans love their chilli crabs and black pepper crabs - these dishes are cooked using the most common crab we see in Singapore - Sri Lanka crabs. However, as Japanese seafood become more and more easily available in our country, it is no longer uncommon to see more 'exotic' varieties like the Snow crab or King crab.

One amazing thing I saw at the Hokkaido Fair was this huge King crab that weighed a whopping 3kg. What was even more amazing was its price! $400! Wow... Having only tried one puny segment of a leg as part of a Japanese meal, I would love to be able to buy that!

The 3kg King that costs $400!

Haiz... since I could not possibly spend that kind of moolah on 1 crab (no matter how big), I had to settle for 1 leg again - this time in a bun! Touted as a speciality of Hokkaido, this crab mantou was pretty good. A chewy bun enveloping creamy vegetables and the leg... yum!

Buy the frozen bun and steam it at home!

The Hokkaido Fair at Isetan Scotts just ended today, but after 3 days of moving and setting up, it will be at Isetan Tampines from 3rd to 12th July. Do look out for the big big crab! If only a crab trap set in local waters would yield something like this... Droolz....

Casting Practice @ Kranji & Bedok

We will have a chance to do popping in the Andamans, a trip we have been planning for ages, next year. As we have never popped before, the group of friends with whom we are going to the Similan Islands invited us to their casting session at Kranji Reservoir. We arrived slightly past 7am and walked all the way in to the end of Fishing Grounds A.

Cool breezy morning at Kranji Reservoir... Beware of mosquitoes!

One thing that caught my attention was this sign put up at the sign of the path. Does it mean that I cannot use live prawns but dead ones are ok??? If the point is to minimise any pollution to the water, shouldn't the sign say "Only artificial lures allowed" instead? Hmm...

Can I use dead prawns, fish and sotong?

We started practising around 7:30am and in hour, our arms were aching already... And we were told that we would be casting for hours on the trip! Pengz... Looking at our friends casting their poppers to what seemed to be an incredibly far distance, we quickly told ourselves that we needed weekly practices... at least!

We were so enthusiastic about improving our casting that the 1 over hour session in the morning was not enough - we went for an evening seesion on our own! There were much more people over at Bedok Reservoir, including many runners/joggers and families with kids out for a walk. Our presence was rather unusual among the handful of anglers fishing there. We attracted quite a bit of attention especially with our relatively big popper!

Casting with the sunset as a backdrop...

Hopefully, we will really be consistent in practicing and improve our distances!

What better time to go BSR?

Saw the Air Asia advertisement in the newspapers and went online to check out their promotional airfares to Bangkok. WOW! It is really cheap! Return tickets for 2 to BKK can be as low as $122!

Timing also seemed pretty good with departures at 10 plus in the morning and arrivals at 8 plus in the evening.

Wait... There has to be a catch somewhere yah? Well the cheapest tickets were of course those that would require you to take leave for the entire trip - Eg. Departing Tuesday or Wednesday and Arriving Friday or Saturday. However, if you have lot's of leave to clear, why not?

Air Asia Promotion
Booking Period: 24 Jun 2009 - 28 Jun 2009

Travel Period: 1 Oct 2009 - 30 Apr 2010

When the fishing community goes to Bangkok, the first place they would think of is Bungsamran (BSR) - the huge freshwater lake that boasts of enormous fish like the Arapiama and Mekong Catfish.

Mekong Catfish & Patin at BSR

MFF actually made a trip there once before in 2007. We liked the experience a lot and that's why we're going there again this August!

The second place popular with anglers is the Boon Ma Farm where you can lure for seabass aka Kim Bak Lor. We did not mange to go there last trip as we went to BSR on the first day and our arms were aching too much the second day! Hahaha...

This time... we will go Boon Ma first before making our way to BSR on the second day. :)

Fish & Sotong - The dried version

Went to the Hokkaido Fair in Isetan Scotts today and spent a lot of money - all on food. Part of that expenditure is actually $60 worth of dried fish and sotong!

Dry Smoked Salmon at

$9.20 per 100g

Most worthy of mention is the dry smoked salmon. The last dried salmon I tasted was in a package from a supermarket, imported from... Australia, I think? I cannot remember much about it, other than the fact that it was disgustingly salty with an overpowering fishy taste. BLEH! Thus, as they were offering small pieces of this for sampling, I gingerly tried a piece. Surprisingly, this salmon tasted only a little fishy and was not really salty. Being a fan of dried beef jerky, I also liked the fact that the fish was slightly tough and chewy.

Close-up of the strips of salmon

The stall that was offering dried squid had so many variants that I was spoilt for choice! The price was $10 per pack and buy 5 get 1 free, so you get to mix and match six packets. I think there were almost 20 types there and you can get a taste of every kind! You can find sotong strips with mentaiko (spicy cod roe), squid ink or in original flavour; soft squid strips in cheese, BBQ or original flavour; whole sotongs in miso, BBQ or original flavour... Can you imagine what it was like?

Strips of dried squid with squid ink

Chewy squid in miso flavour

Thinly sliced dried seafood fishcake

I know this entire post is rather off-topic, but when I was eating all these I couldn't help but think about what life was like in the past. When people had to smoke, dry or cure their catch to preserve them as there were no means of refrigeration.

How I wish I have the option of preserving some of my catch in this way... OH! That reminds me of my quest for kelong salted fish! Well, that's a whole other story...

OT - Off Topic Random Musings

Due to various reasons (including the bad economy), we don't go fishing as often as we like. Fishing plans for the rest of this year include:

July

Malaysia - Perak Belum Rainforest Resort + KL Fishing Exhibition

August

Thailand - Bangkok Bungsamran + Boon Ma

November

Thailand - Similan Islands

Now, even if we add the kelong trips and local fishing outings in, it would only add up to about 1 post per month and that's quite sad for any blog.

Of course, the best case scenario is that we go for many many fishing trips on which we write many many interesting posts to attract many many readers and in turn earn enough money from the sale of our merchandise to not work and go for many many fishing tri...

OK. You get the picture, right?

Since it is rather unlikely that this wonderful picture will ever become reality, we have to come up with alternatives. So to prevent cobwebs from forming on this blog and not disappoint our readers (if you are out there...), we may have occasional off topic posts that can be about anything not related to fishing.

We hope that's ok with everyone yah? :)

CR - A 1.5 Hr Escapade 20/06/09

The lunar calender and tide table were consulted a few weeks before and the MFF resident 'astrologer' declared 20th Jun to be a good date for fishing. We found that the timing for high tide was 9:30am and decided to do some fishing from shore 2 hours before and after.

Having dragged ourselves from bed at 5:30am and proceeded to PRMP to buy live prawns, we arrived in good time even after a detour for a cup of kopi and soya bean milk.

Set up and started fishing at 7:30am. After about 30 minutes, a 'knock knock' and a pull on the small rod with prawn cubes produced a palm sized parrot. Encouraged by the results, we pushed on despite strong currents that swept our line away very fast. Before long, another guest arrived - this time a 700g kaci hungry for a whole live prawn. Woohoo!

Just as we were enthusiastically going on, unforeseen circumstances forced us to cut short our rather productive session. Haiz...

Never mind, the catch is just nice to cater for a good meal during the weekend. :P