Bedok Jetty 240607 CR - An Assortment Of Fishes

[Darth Salacious]

It has been a long hectic month for me at work and my poor rod and reel had not tasted any action at all during this "dry" period. With the short break I had this weekend, I decided to wet my newly purchased braided lines at Bedok Jetty along with my wife and my colleague and fishing kaki, Raymond.

With the highest tide of the day coming in at 5:28 in the morning, I met up with Raymond at around 4:30 to have our breakfast and also to get some prawns from his neighbourhood market in Bedok. After that, we were raring to go. I guess the averse break from fishing had us craving for it even more.

When we arrived at the jetty, it was not as crowded as we would have expected, considering that this was the last Sunday of the school holidays. Nonetheless, we took up our usual spot near to the end of the jetty. By 5:40, 2 of our lines hit the water with long snood bottom feeders hooked with the prawns we bought earlier while we rigged up another 2 rods in preparation for the schools of Tamban coming in at first light.

With a steady supply of live tamban after jigging for them, we changed our setups for our baiting rods. Raymond attached a float and splitshot weight setup to his live tamban while I rigged up a Cable Car rig for mine. Wifey continued jigging for Tambans and got an unidentified fish (picture below, any help in identifying the fish is most appreciated) amongst her catches.

About 15 minutes after my live Tamban bait hit the water, an uncle who had tied his handline beside my baiting rod started to pull in his floating rig. Unfortunately, due to the current, we had crossed lines and we started to rectify it. While we were at this, I could see a flurry of activity in the water in front of us.

As luck would have it, my line started to tug hard and I tried to land a strike. Unfortunately, due to the acute angle of the crossed lines, I guess the hook didn't set in properly. I started pumping my rod in hope that this would help. My rig appeared on the surface of the water almost instantly with a Long Tom biting on to my Tamban. In that split second, it fell back into the water and swam back into the depths, splashing around wildly. Even the uncle was saying that it was a big one and that it was very "suay" that the garfish had to bite while we were uncrossing our lines. An estimation of it's length based on our view of it from the jetty was about 50cm. (Heart pain...)

When it was around 10 plus, the Tamban stopped biting even though there was visibly a huge school of them. Raymond was joking that feeding time was over for the tambans. Everyone was still casting their lines to try their luck but it seemed that there were no more Tamban hookups anymore.

Anyway, we managed to catch an assortment of fishes using dead prawn. It was a pity that my camera battery went dead when I tried to photograph the fishes at the jetty so I could only take them when I reached home instead.

From top: Juvenile (Orange Spotted?) Grouper caught by Raymond, Crescent Perch (can anyone help to confirm this?) caught by me and the last two hookups were by wifey, an unidentified Pomfret lookalike (any help to ID this is appreciated as well.) as well as a Green Rough-Backed Puffer which puffed up when we tried to remove it from the hook.

Thanks for reading and, tight lines!

[Peace]

Nice write up. You guys are sure hardworking anglers, waking up that to catch the tide.

The first fish on top is a butterfly whiptail and the one below it is a tamban. Note that there can be a few species of 'tambans'; some have broader body and some like the one below is slender.

It's unfortunate that the todak takes your bait while untangling the lines. Sometimes it's also because of the untangling causing some retrieval and subtle movement that induces the todak to bite. If the bait is big (ie. whole tamban), it would require some time for the todak to swallow it in order to have a much higher chance of setting the hook. It's very difficult to set the hook when the todak holds the fish in its mouth as its beak is hard, making it difficult for the hook to pierce through.

Too bad you didn't have much control over the setting of hook, but there will be another time ya.

The tambans indeed does have a feeding habit/time. They mostly feed during the early and near end of the day. At midday, you can see the tambans swimming near the surface or along the jetty but refusing to take the jigs. Only the better made tamban jigs and those with good techniques can still manage to grab a few.

The grouper is indeed an orange-spotted grouper, crescent perch is correct too (aka Kelong Chi). I'm not quite sure about the pomfret you have there, but I see some spots on its body; it could possibly be a smallspotted dart. You've got the pufferfish right too.

Thanks for sharing your catch.

p/s: There's the FNR anniversary outing at BJT today too, did you manage to catch it?

[desleyhan]

Hey Darth Salacious,

From 4:30 - what time did you fish till?

Very nice assortment there .... Congratz!

[Darth Salacious]

Hi Desley,

We fished until about noon. After that the tide started subsiding and we decided to pack up.
Thanks for the encouragement.