Dec 2011 - Kampar Haruan Trip

We left Kuala Lumpur as early as 4 30am and reached this coffee shop located at Mambang Diawan, Kampar, by 6 30am. While pushing off so early our aim was to catch the dawn-haruan session where haruan will surface for oxygen. The problem was that the pond owner came to meet us only at 8 30am. 2 hours at the coffee shop counting number of vehicles passed by ... hahaha, not something you will enjoy doing when you wake up at 4am to prepare for it.

This is the entrance to the abandon pond. Long tall lalang were covering the path. "seems like nobody came in here for mama haruan huh?" I asked my fishing buddy S Leong while we were entering the oil palm estate.

I snapped this before I start casting my frog lure. The pond owner stocked the pond with haruan, mable goby, rohu and jelawat since 2 years ago but did not really feed them regularly.

The pond from another angle. Hills behind are Kampar hills. I thought the sceney was breathtaking.

Rohu caught on lure. A "meat-eating monk".

 

A small haruan caught on lure. It is by fact not a young fish; the owner has stocked them since 2 years ago and there is nothing for them in the pond. All haruan caught were in this size range. This old small haruan was released.

 

This was my first fish in the first pond, a rohu, caught using yozuri. Fellow anglers were puzzled with the fact that being a herbivorous fish, rohu took a lure. Well, sometimes fish bite when they felt threated too. 

I have no complain when it was steamed in garlic gravy. The flesh was solid and sweet, and I was told by the pond owner these fishes are more than 2 years old. 

The pond owner did not feed the stock regularly and the growing rate is slow. Come to think about this, I think what he said was true, I used to steam tilapia from my friend's farm few years back, which was some 12 months old and grown to the size of 1.5kg-ish, and the fish tasted brilliantly good. So, "old fish taste good", or rather, "slow-grown fish tastes good", this is true to certain extent. If the fish stock is fed with heavy fat and protein feed just to hit higher scale when it is weight, then the flesh taste plain and soft.

 

We tried this spot at the afternoon of our first day at Tronoh Mines area. Plenty of surface action were observed but all were far from where we were fishing. S Leong registered one bite with his dead frog but was nothing serious. The sound and water ripples from unknown fishes have direct made me plan for my next fishing here, with different preparation, of course.

S Leong in action.

This is our 2nd spot; huge lake with water splashes here and there. There were few raises where the head and tails of fishes were sighted, and it was patin, estimated in the size of over 5kg-ish. These splashes were far from shore nevertheless.