CR - 10/10/09 Pekan

We departed Singapore and reached JB around 3pm on Friday. It was agreed that we would take half day's leave so the the drivers could have a good night's rest before fishing on Saturday. The journey took about 4 hours so we reached Pekan 7 plus pm, had dinner, set up our gear, washed up and went to bed.

15 rods + 4 bags for the 6 of us!



The next morning, we went for breakfast, boarded the boat and set off about 9am.

The 3 speedboats operated by the same boatman.



We were to go catch some baitfish for the sails. There were baitfish, but they weren't biting enthusiastically and thus the bait-well had only 10 over assorted fish ranging from selar to tamban to slimy mackeral. Some of us, including yours truly, was tired of the slow baitfish action and turned to eging. Yeah! It was a one drop one kill situation, with the familiar tugging from big green-eyes and arrows appearing only after a couple of bounces off the seabed!

Nobody got inked!


As the squids there were plentiful and all of reasonable size (you won't find those puny little ones I caught during the last kelong trip!), it is better to use sized 3 eging lures. I caught 7 within 15 minutes! The only regret was that we had to leave for the sailfish spot soon after I got into the momentum. Sad...


















A pail of assorted squid... Yum!



Ok, the next part is when it gets a little painful to talk about. So pardon me for being brief.

When we reached the sailfish area, the boatmen rigged up 2 rods with baitfish and waited for the fish to take. Neil and WT immediately started casting their stickbaits, hoping for a chance to get a sailfish that they had casted, set hook and fought entirely by themselves. The two were to be disappointed.

Despite being armed with very good lures (Gunz Tailwalk & Shimano Ocea Pencil respectively), their hardwork and perseverance was rewarded only with misses. It was either that the hook just could not be set properly when the fish took the lure, or that the sailfish followed all the way back to the side of the boat without biting. Haiz...

There were a total of 5 saifish taking the live bait. 2 were lost and 3 were landed by the other 3 who made up our group - June, Vincent and Desmond. A fourth was actually caught when it took Vincent's jig, so he actually fought 2 sails! (I turned as green as my ima Ro jig with jealousy...) So people, do be hardworking. You never know what fish will take your jig!

I was jigging all the way too, but my catch was a 2kg cobia and assorted smaller fish like table sized Kerisi and Grouper. No sails leh... :(

My cobia on jig. 



It was about 3pm when the boatmen suddenly said that the winds were rising and we should move to a bottom spot for some baiting. Despite our extreme reluctance as we had yet to fight a sailfish, we had to agree. However, the winds were even stronger when we reached the new spot and we had to return after staying less than 15 minutes! The journey back was a very wet one as rain started soon after...

And that, was the end of our sailfish dream... Sob...