July 06, 1995
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| NorthernHardcoreFisherman at Tanjung Leman Beach |
Many things in life are pre-arranged and I really believed in it, over the next few months after I re-settled down here, when I returned to my hometown on the weekend the same gang that took me to Kukup came to my house, they never give up trying to transform me into what they are, an angler. However. the excitement which I had on that Kukup trip was cooled down and in many occasion and I just turned away on the invitation.
Long story short and two years later I was out working, with more friends and more bad influences I got into many troubles, but I was lucky that I didn't end up in jail. In 1995 I joined a company which's selling some holiday products and I met this guy, Ken. We became good friend and he always invited me to his house. (Just to clarify: I am not into Homosexual)
I remembered it was Monday and it was our off-day, (We work over the weekend) I came to his house and as he was bathing his mum told me to wait in his bedroom. While waiting I was too bored and started searching for something to read, then I saw a magazine laying on the floor beside his bed
"Hey! this naughty boy is reading naughty book huh!"
Out of curiosity I picked up the book from the floor, (actually back then I was quite naughty too)
"Yee? What's this? A Fishing Magazine?" I never knew that he was into fishing as he never mentioned any related topic during our chat, I looked at the cover page it is called "Sport Fishing" and then I read on.
"You like that?" Ken came into the room with his still wet hair, using a tower drying his hair he looked at me and said. I didn't notice his present as I was very much into an article about this Caucasian guy who caught a 1000 lbs Blue Marlin at the Pacific Ocean. (I admitted that I did pay some focus on the bikini girls as well)
"This one? Ya, very exciting." I replied
Ken walked over to his wardrobe and brought down a big black thrash bag from the top, the way he carried it I could tell that it's pretty heavy.
"There's more here, you can bring them home to read but please take great care of it, those are my treasures." He placed it in front of me and said.
After that he too took out a magazine and sat down beside me and read. We talked about the articles inside the magazine and he shared with me the trips he went as well as the fish he caught. I left his house at around 2am with that heavy big black thrash bag, I had to use two bungee cords to secure it on to the backseat of my Honda NSR.
The next day when we met at the work place, the first word came out from my mouth was, "Hey! When you wanna bring me to fish?" Ken just smile at me and told me that he would arrange. The fishing topics became our common language ever since, during the cigarette break, lunch break and even on the bike when I sent him home.
Ken brought me to a wet market at Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10, where he introduced to me his master cum good friend Ah Long who owns a Aquarium shop here. I learned a lot more at this wet, humid and rowdy place coupled with the smell of raw meats and seafood. Ah Long loved fresh water fishing and his favorite species is Toman, the Snakehead. He told me his biggest catch was 23kg and it took him around two hours to land the fish. Ah Long sells live baits at his shop and he said the best live bait to get the Giant Toman is catfish, the best size would be around 15 inches long according to his experience.
It was a Sunday while me and Ken were having the puffing break at the workplace, he told me Ah Long and his gang were going to fish for the Toman tonight at Neo Tiew and Ah Long invited us. I told Ken that although I was very keen but I did not own any fishing tackle, Ken said Ah Long got many spare tackles and I could borrow from him. So there you are, my second real fishing trip after almost 5 years of break. (All the while I talk like a Pro with Ken after reading those magazines and some VCDs, I never thought of buying any tackle)
After work I didn't go home as Ken suggested that I could bath at his house and he would lent me his clothing, we were buddy back then and we were about the same size. (The body size, not the...) We met Ah Long at the wet market at around 10pm, we hopped into his Toyota Liteace and headed to our destination, the Neo Tiew Road. The journey from Ang Mo Kio to there is around 23km, back then the Traffic Police was having a tight budget and the Speed Camera was too expensive to install in everywhere like today, the World Factory, China was still half asleep thus not many Made in China cheap gadgets in the market as well. Ah Long drove like Micheal Shumacher with his humble Toyota Liteace and we reached there in 15 minutes time!
The exact spot was at Neo Tiew Lane and it is a no-through road in fact, the van drove in and stopped before the barricade. Ah Long parked the van at the road side in front of the barricade, we then climbed over the barricade with the tackles and walked towards the spot. In a short distance I saw a PUB Power Station and some fences beside it, Ah Long told us that we had to climbed over the fences to get into the spot. After some hustle and bustle we were inside the area which is surrounded by darkness and tall grasses, this near pitch dark atmosphere was accompanied by the non-stop sound of the insects and the constant attack from the blood sucking mosquitoes. Before we came in Ah Long highlighted some do's and don'ts when we were inside, one of those was we needed to cover the cigarette inside our palm when we smoke, the lighted cigarette would exposed our whereabouts and attracted unwanted attention, The PUB Rangers, as this is a forbidden area we would be fined if we were caught.
We took another 20 minutes of careful walked without a torch light to reach to the spot and Ah Long's friends were already there, we settled down immediately and Ken taught me how to catch the live catfish from the bait box and baiting it. The rig we were using was a simple Duo Hooks rig, using two size 0/4 J-Hook tied on the 40 lbs steel leader, the first hook would went through the back of the catfish near to it's head and the second hook near to it's tail, we didn't use any weight as we were using the free running line style. The catfish was tossed into the river and it would start swimming away, as it was pierced through at the back the scents of it blood would attract our targeted species, the Toman. The rod was a 6 footer for me courtesy of Ah Long and a Shimano Aero Symetre 4000 was paired with it. I bought a new reel of the same model after the trip, it is a spinning reel and I used it for the next 15 years before it officially retired, I still kept it in the cupboard though as it's my first ever fishing reel, lot's of memories with it when I traveled from places to places across Singapore and Malaysia.
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| Shimano Aero Symetre 4000 Spinning Reel |
Me and Ken sat on the grassy mud floor chatting softly, there were around 10 of us including Ah Long's friends. Suddenly we heard the sound of the running spool at the front, "Zeee.......zeee......" and when it stopped, Ben who was already standing by with his both hands placing on the rod lifted it up in lightning speed, with his left hand gripping firmly on the spool and his right hand on the rod he struck the fish as hard as he could, he then tighten the tension of the reel and whacked it for the second time, the fight took around 10 minutes and it was a Toman which weighed around 6kg.
I got my long awaited running spool after almost an hour, I was a bit panicked and almost slipped on to the ground when I dashed forward to grab my rod. It's been 5 long years since I last tasted this excitement and I can only tell you that it is beyond words to describe how I felt at that moment.
I heard a lot from Ah Long about the Toman, how ferocious they are, how fast they swim and how tough they are to fight. I was extremely excited when I picked up the rod and struck the fish twice as I was taught, the strength of the Toman was really strong and it really swam fast, this one that preyed on my catfish was a nippy cunning bugger, after it was struck hard and the hook deeply penetrated into it's hard jawbone, it went wild by dashing forward for about 1 minutes and then it made a U-turn which caught me by surprise, luckily the Shimano Aero I used had a 5.0:1 gear ration with two stainless steel ball bearings in it and the precision technology by the Japanese company helped me retriving the slacked 15 lbs braided line with ease.
There's a reason why I called this Toman nippy cunning bugger, after the slacked line was retrieved and tighten it dashed out again and this time to the right. The fishing rod I used was a Shakespeare Ugly Stik 6 footer, a well known fishing rod for it's strength and toughness. I imitated the movement by this Japanese guy in one of the VCD I watched, twisting the rod sideways and pulled the rod to the left which managed to slow down the Toman from surging further. Ken asked me to walked towards the right to recover some lines, everyone made way for me to walk to the front where the Toman was, as I was getting closer it started to run again and this time it was surging forward. This made my job easier all I did was just lifted the rod high up and waited for the Toman to slow down, and when it did I quickly reeled back the lines as I lowered the fishing rod and lifted up to pumped the Toman back.
The Toman was defeated after 20 minutes tug of war, it weighed around 6 kg as well, a great fight for someone like me with not much or almost zero experience. I had three more fights on that night which ended with one of it broke loose, the other two I landed were weighed 3 kg and 5 kg.
We ended the trip at 6am in the morning, Ah Long said the PUB guy would come in at 7am and we needed to leave before they saw us. In total we caught 21 Tomans, Ken had only one under his belt and Ah Long didn't catch any. What can I say, Beginner's luck?
So that's when and how my rusty engine was restarted after the long 5 years break and I couldn't stop ever since. Me, Ken and Ah Long went for many more trips in several other fresh water spots, I was introduced to saltwater again only until.... Stay tuned for my next blog on saltwater fishing.
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Always Tight Line, Hardcore is the Spirit!
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