Ah Ngan Kelong CR - Fish

It's NE monsoon again, time of the year when we will go kelong more often! Supposedly there should be selars in abundance, but for this trip, the number of selars caught was just enough for me to use as bait.

There were quite a few sizable cobia landed on the kelong during my stay there and one of them was landed by me at 15kg. Lost another similar sized cobia by the kelong side due to poor gaffing skills by the Malay kelong helper. Lesson learnt, gaff your own fish if you have the experience. Even the kelong workers may not know how to gaff a fish properly. Both cobias were caught using selar as bait. Looks like very few selars may means they make better bait!

15kg Cobia


While I was fishing for Leng Chiams, my line unexpectedly ran out very fast. I was using very small size hooks (Owner Size 8, Apollo rig) so I had to be very careful not to let the hooks open up while fighting. Luckily the fish swam outwards instead of into the kelong. The first fish that came into my mind was a sizable batfish because only they are strong enough to exert this kind of pulling force and will take my small prawn cubes. But... usually batfish will swim under the kelong instead of outwards. So I was really confused, without a clue, and very anxious to find out. After some fight on my light tackle, I got my answer - it was a foul hooked barracuda! No wonder I was unable to tell...   -.-

Yellow-tailed Barracuda


Also tried some soft rubber lures after getting sick of the baby Leng Chiams and managed to catch... this slightly bigger Leng Chiam... again. It was quite a different experience on rubber though.

Leng Chiam on soft rubber lure


Was hoping to catch some saitoh as bait during the night as selar was really scarce. No saitoh was caught throughout the trip but I managed to hook up quite a handful of baby big-eyed trevallies using 'homemade' luminous jigs. 

A dozen or so of these were caught!


Was quite fun on light tackle as well, and sometimes the bite rate was one cast one hit.


Overall the catch was not bad except the quantity of selars was way below expectations. Well, this doesn't mean the number of selars is fewer this year, this only mean that we have to go up to the kelongs more often to hopefully meet the fishing frenzy!

 - Special report by QWT.