A site about my fishing journey across Singapore & Malaysia since 2006, places like Bedok Jetty, Labrador Jetty, Ford Road Jetty, St John's Island, Ubin Island. I crossed the border to Desaru, Mersing, Batu Pahat, Port Dickson, Malacca and as far as Terengganu at Kijal. Here also feature the stuff I made, the Bait Launcher, the Intex Seahwak II Inflatable boat etc.
The Air Papan Beach is one of the place that will always come to my mind whenever I wanted to do some fishing in Malaysia. Even though the distance is almost 160km away from my home and the journey takes around two hours of bumpy and narrow road, with many unexpected sharp turns that might shrink your balls especially if you are not familiar with the road. Not mentioning the huge and long timber trucks that are snailing when uphill, dragging your speed down to 20kmh! When downhill some of them speed up as you attempt to over-take them, intimidating you with the loud 10,000cc turbo boosted diesel engine sound and thick black stinky smoke from the exhaust pipe. But all of this can't stop me from visiting this place again and again, the beautiful Air Papan beach.
5.5km to Air Papan Beach
Beautiful Air Papan
On the 28th September 2012 I made another trip there, again another solo trip. I set off from my home at around 2am and headed straight to Air Papan after crossing the border into Malaysia. It was a smooth journey as there were not many slow moving vehicles on the road. I managed to reach Air Papan at 5:30am and without much delayed I set up my old timer, the Loomis & Franklin 10 footer with a two hooks set rig. The Sky started to brighten up as I hooked up the Tamban (Greenback) that I caught in Singapore as bait. After the first cast of the day I sat down on the beach and enjoyed this beautiful Air Papan sunrise.
Loomis & Franklin
Sunrise
The almighty Sun gradually raised above the horizon and torn apart the darkness, the cold misty air was disappearing and the cloud was dispersed. The Sunlight shot across the sky and reflected on to the cloud, it seems like it was painted with light orange color. As the Sunlight penetrated through the thinning cloud it shined on to the South China Sea, forming a long trail of reflection which extended from the far east towards the shore line.
New Resort Hotel
Life Guard Tower
Lot's of developments have been going on here. I remembered when I first visited this place in 2006 I didn't see so many resorts and none of the resorts back then were above two storeys tall. That Life Guard tower wasn't even there.
Parking Ticket
And best part of it was, nowadays you need to pay for parking here.
Surecatch
I set up another rod which is a newly acquired cheap spinning rod from Surecatch. A 13 footer with the price tag of S$26! It is a steal! This rod was paired with another new toy, another Surecatch product. It is a spinning reel with a size 6000 spool. It is loaded with 300 meters of 40lbs test braided lines.
Kite Fishing Gears
I had brought along this Kite Fishing kits. The kits consisted of a Power Sledge Kite which I bought from a kite shop here in Singapore, another dragon shape kite was bought from Terengganu when I visited there in 2012. The kite lines Drum was also purchased from that Kite shop in Singapore, costing me S$49! I loaded it with 2000 meter of 80 lbs kite lines. A fishing lines drum was made using a car audio cable drum and some PVC pipes, 1000 meter of 130 lbs monofilement fishing lines was loaded on to it. Again the wind was too weak to fly my kite up, even though it was blowing towards the open sea.
The Rod and The Beach
Over at the far end corner where the small hill stretching into the sea, found a flat platform on that small cliff during the 2006 visit, walked a distance of 1km on the rocky beach during low tide, climbed up there and trying out some so-call Rock Fishing there, got stuck for almost 10 hours due to the high tide, the return path was submerged. As I didn't prepared for this I got sun burn on my both arms and legs, not a inch was spared.
The South China Sea
As the land I stood on is situated right on the Equator, with sizzling hot sun beam almost throughout the year, temperature on a average of 31 degree Celsius, and it get hotter here at the beach. I was being toasted like a marinated salted fish, dry and salty. Hiding beside the Life Guard tower, I delayed the checking of the bait by 15 minutes. At around 11am, after cooling underneath the tower for quite a while, i went up to my rod to check on the baits. It's been quiet since I reached here, no even a tremble was detected on my rod tip. I brought back the Loomis & Franklin first, the bait was gone, probably the Whittings had snipped it off. Another Tamban was hooked and cast out, went over to the Surecatch and same fate on the 13 footer, bait was gone. Well, repeated the same procedure and whack my rod harder hoping to achieve greater distance that's too far for the greedy Whitting to reach. As I was placing the Surecatch onto the rod holder and adjusting the drag tension, I felt something on my right side, glanced over and saw the tip of the Loomis & Franklin was dipping violently, Got fish! Fish Strike! I ran over and without hesitating and pulled the rod up, I reeled back some lines until it's tight and gave it a hard struck... "Fish On!" The struggling was quite strong and the fish was running everywhere, Wow! what fish is this? I was thinking, I expected a stingray here but this one definitely didn't act like one. It was twisting and jerking and swam pretty fast. But the action was short and within 5 minutes the fish surrendered, I slowly brought it back and when it surfaced, It was a Spanish Mackerel!
The Trophy
The Spanish Mackerel
It's a table size fish, and a rare species that caught here. Best part was the fish was foul hooked on the tail! I wasn't sure if it was the hook drop off during the struggle and the line somehow entangled with it's tail, or it was too unlucky to swam pass my line a got stranded. Anyway, it was caught on my rod and I claimed the victory.
September 28, 2012
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