Yan Trip - Dec 20-21

I came back from Yan at KL last Sunday evening with my friend Derrick and another 2 fishing buddies. We only manage to fish at the tuas (local name of FAD) for the 1st day, and decided with support from the boatman, that we should cancel the 2nd day plan. We suffered from strong wind from north-east and fish was not biting. Details as follows ...

We pushed off from KL about 4:00pm and heading Penang. It was lucky for us that the traffic at Penang bridge was not as bad as we imagine when we reach the toll at 7 15pm. At 9pm, as Derrick arranged, we met fellow Roslan from Penang which will be also be fishing at the following day. With Roslan guidance we had our dinner at Northern part of Penang.

We started our journey to Yan on 4 15am, Dec 20. After our breakfast and collection of kembong bait as booked by Roslan, the boat left the fishing port at about 7 15am. The sea breeze during then was mild, but wind picked up after we were on the sea for about 30 mins. The boatman took a new "tuas" with him and intended to be "planted" in that trip. It was new experience for me to witness how a tuas looked like. Basically it is a long rope with top part of it tied to 3 length of bamboo, where the intermediate are tied with nipah leafs, with interval of about 1.5m. The bottom was a well-ring alike concrete structure and tied with lots of new leafs. I did not asked the boatman if different leafs would make any difference for the fish-attracting purpose though. How he positioned the tuas was, he brought his boat to front of the tuas and dropped those bamboo into the sea and let the boat drifted by the wind for a while, and sink the concrete approximately at the spot where other bamboos located.

New experience it was, but we lost about an hour of time on the sea, watching small size dorado playing with they prey chasing at the top part of the tuas.

I remember it was about 9am when we were able to sink our jigs into the sea and started working on it. There was another boat from Yan too was long sided on the same tuas as we did. The boatman tied his boat at the bamboo and as what we observed, the bait fishes and predators were active at the front area. I had a talk with Derrick about where we actually should be fishing and Derrick tried to request for same, but the boatman responded saying wind was strong and the anchor would not able to hold the boat at such condition.

Later we saw the other boat started hauling dorado, and none of them is doing jigging. The boatman assistant tried to cast dead kembong around but there was no taker.

I have prepared 2 types of feather lure with me for this trip. The first feather lure was tied by Nick the famous fly fishing guy from Tacklebox Subang Jaya. I tied a wire right in front of it with a weight added to increase the castability. I thought the soft feather from some birds would make the lure seems "swimming freely and cheerfully" and probably mackerel in Yan would like to try how it tastes like. Photo below is how the lure looks like.

The result? I jig-pause-jig-jig-jig-jig-paaaause-jig, changed from short to long pause, fast to slow twitch, long and short twitch, you could not say I was not hardworking enough then. The best attraction I successfully made was couple of times where a school of dorado with size of approximately 2ft followed the lure till about 6ft from the boat and puuuffff they made a smartass U-turn, comically showing me a middle finger when they did that.

The 2nd feather lure was bought by Derrick when he was in Penang tackle shop, and we put wire+hook to make it ready for mackerel nice clean teeth, I thought I was smarter but ... I tried this lure at later stage of our fishing, there was no dorado nor mackerel followed this lure to my sight but perhaps the waters during that was not conducive for fish bites. At a glance, this feather lure "swimming" action was not bad. The 4 nos. of longer feather seems soft and played lively when you twitch em.

At the time I try to look for the lure to snap a photo, I could not find in my luggage. I called Derrick and the other 2 friends if it was accidentally packed in their bag but the answers were negative. Looks like I have to leave the photo empty here.

While we were jigging on our boat, the boat near to ours was producing result. With live bait they got from sabiki and drift it out, they managed to haul a tenggiri at approximately 11am. From the distance I estimated that tenggiri would be a 6kg-ish. I thought that was not a bad catch, and Derrick started his effort to jig for bait fish at front part of the boat too but register no selar or kembong.

It was about noon then we drift our first live kembong with balloon. Meanwhile we tried pintail on top of our jigging and maintain the effort. Strong wind picked up around 2pm, coupled with the no bite condition, we decided to call it off for that day and heading to Yan's port.

We stopped at Pulau Song Song on our way and the boatman longsided his boat behind the wind, together with many other fishing boats. I could see anglers doing swimming, casting for squids or simply relaxing, and we end up doing easy casting with low expecation at that area too.

We returned at port at approximately 5pm, and we exchanged weather condition and the low bite rate with other anglers. The boatman suggested we make another trip to Yan on March where the wind is expected to subdue. From the conversation then, I understand max number of tenggiri they could haul per day at correct day is 60+ per boat. "That was not bad..." I was so thought. The boatman that supposed to take us out at the following day suggested us to retire for second day too as making it happen would be "wasting money". We obliged and make a tentative fishing dates with him next year.

Later, the group meet up with the other team where Roslan was and we had our dinner at a restaurant nearby.

We drove to Penang island later and convert our fishing trip to a Penang Food Hunt at the evening. I appreciate Derrick effort to drive us around in and out and to good food corners in Penang. The 2nd day we spend our day in "kakilai" paypond and got some fun with farmed siakap (barramundi) there. What I wish to write down here about kakilai pond is the very friendly and nice owners Ah Tong and his wife. At that time Ah Tong was telling kaki-lai pay pond will be re-open on January 1st of 2009 with new fee.

About the tenggiri in Yan, my next visit would need the following;

1) murky water

2) spinner with multiple hooks for kembong. Jigging would be nice, sure, but come to think about number of jig one need to contribute for a reasonable catch, you will think like what I think.

3) easy wind

4) dead fresh kembong, 15 to 20 per anglers

That ends my Yan's trip report of Dec 2008.

November gonna be a "fishless" month!

Well ... time flies, it is now 3rd day of November 2008.

I was rather ambitious earlier this year to make or join fishing trips. I targeted 1 trip every month and I have made 7 trips till date. Out of which 3 trips were at west coast and 4 were at east coast of peninsular Malaysia. Out from that 4 trips in east coast, 1 was rather fishless and we ended up in a boat ride with boatman ikan masin of Pekan boats in March 2008. My fishing buddy Sharma made a report on the fishless trip as in http://crazyfisherman.blogspot.com/2008/03/fishless-in-pekan.html

So ... to be more precise, it was 6 trips that I have made huh?

(continue on Dec 5th 2008)

Due to circumstances that could not be improved, my wife stopped her employment and started her career as Unit Trust Consultant under Public Mutual. This move of hers has changed my fishing plan considerably.

With that I have decided to not fish at all in the month of November.

My fishing friend Ryan got a trip to Pulau Jarak waters on November 14-16 on GT Chaser. Ryan's plan earlier was I shall join him in that trip and we shall do more bottom fishing. To reduce the damage on his end, I managed to get another fishing friend to replace my seat. I was happy that they finally made it and came back with good catch. I have found a good photo for the catch summary, copied from report from other angler on board;

I met with Ryan after he came back from the trip. According to Ryan, the silver grunter at left side (just at the stomach of the junior big eye trevally) was hauled by Ah Ho, where only him and Ryan was doing bottom late in the midnight. Well, that is what I would like to see; Ah Ho fishing. Hahaha...

There were few remarkable GT hauled up in this trip, such as this, by my fishing friend PK. Base on my humble estimation should be around 10-12kg. Ah huh ... I notice he caught this with long jig, will ask him how did he work it out, I never got good success with long jigs.




Ryan with his GT, estimated at 8kg-ish.

Another photo with Allan in action, standing behind are skipper Ah Ho and Steven.





Angler Allan with a half fish, believed to be robbed by black tip shark in mid water. Hmmm .... looking at the bite mark, the size of black tip is believed to be >15kg. This make me think where to find a jig as big as the GT and ... you know what I mean.





A not bad size GT, angler unknown

The other thing that worth mention here is the "father & son" skippers from Pekan also joined in the trip; skipper ikan masin and his son Ah Boy travelled from Pekan and boarded on GT Chaser. It is really unfortunate that I could not find their photo on GT Chaser though I knew Ah Boy did snapped few photos on board. Will try to get it and post it here, let's see..

Well ... that ends the brief report on Ryan Nov 14-16 GT Chaser Trip.


What is there in December??


About 2 weeks back my friend Derrick asked me if I could make a trip to Yan, Kedah, on Dec 20-21 for 2 days jigging, hunting for mackerel (in local name, "tenggiri"). I made a quick check with my wife to see if there is any family activities planned on that time frame and within 10 seconds I confirmed with Derrick on the trip.


Yan located at Northern end of peninsular Malaysia, and the drive from Kuala Lumpur to Yan going to take at least 5 hours. Derrick briefed me on the fishing field of Yan, on how fisherman there make their "unjam" (FAD) and seems that each fisherman own his unjam. I thought perhaps it is good idea to explore on it.


Stay tuned for Yan fishing report.

October 17-19 at GT Chaser, Bagan Datoh

I got a call from fishing friend, Ryan, on early last week, saying that one of Tacklebox bookings to Pulau Jarak (PJ) on GT Chaser (GTC) was having problem because of insufficient anglers and was asking me, or pushing rather, to join. With the idea that flashed in mind to try out the new spots that I newly know, I told Ryan I shall be tentatively on.

Friday, Oct 17, 5:55am, I was on my way to Tanjung Harapan with Ryan to pick up live octopus that Ryan has booked earlier. Both of us never have tried live octopus so we thought probably it is a good idea to offer them for our bottom fishing.

6:30am, we were on our way to Kapar. About 7:35am, we met other anglers at Tanjung Karang for breakfast. There were 6 anglers waiting for us at a kopitiam with name that I did not pay attention to remember. After some introduction and jokes, we had our food and left to Bagan Datuh at about 8am.

It has been some 8 months I have not board on GT Chaser, and I was happy to greet Ah Ho when we met on his boat. The boat was as clean as before, with obvious new painting has just done on the hull. I understand from Ryan that GT Chaser experience some gear box problem couple of weeks before that. Probably Ah Ho has took the opportunity to paint the hull while the boat was at dock, I thought.

Through out my deep sea fishing trips using charters from Hutan Melintang, Sg. Besar, Lumut, Pangkor, Kg Acheh, Paka, Rompin and Pekan, GT Chaser is the cleanest boat I have been. The skipper, commonly known as Ah Ho, has his new GT Chaser fabricated and put in charter business since June 2007, after using the first GT Chaser for approximately 7 years. With total construction cost of approximately RM 300,000, the boat has 2 x CUMMINS 160hp engines, runs with fuel consumption that is comparatively much lower than other fishing charters.

Our first fishing spot planned was Hutan Melintang Sea Mountain, so named because of the location is at direct west of Hutang Melintang. After the journey that took about 2hrs 30mins, we started to sink our jigs at about 2 30pm.

I could not precisely remember the frenzy started after how many drifts, but it was about 4pm I guess, when 7 jigs in the water were rewarded with 5 hook-ups, at the same time. The GT did not demand for specific similarities in color and shape of jigs used, as I observed. Neither was there any special rhytym required to attract the bites then.

As I was testing my new PE3 jigging rod, I was paying particular attention on the flex and lifting power of the rod. The jig retrieval was quite effortless with rhythm, I would say. However, upon fish strike and when I started cranking my line back, I noticed each full arm lift on the rod gave me shorter length of line, comparatively, not enough for 2 full crank of line-winding. That is to say, the vertical line displacement (reclaim) was less with each full arm lift using my new PE3 rod that is having higher flex.

With typical size of GT hauled was around 3kg to 5kg, I did not experience any difficulty in landing them. However there was one strike-and-fight ended with I lost the GT at mid water, due to braids snap at the middle. I was puzzled with the reason the SUFIX got snapped, at that point particularly. I believed the line must got injured or something during my earlier trips at that point that gave way.

During one of the drifts, I had a good take on my elcheapo jig. A self-declared "good timing" sentak was launched, and the thrill started. Within less than 1 second, the tug became heavy, and stationed. "&^%$% ... sangkut?" I asked myself. Ah Ho noticed my situation and asked me to hold on, "you put 2 hooks right? one of it is with fish and the other is with rocks" he said. True enough, I still can feel the thrilling tug-tug-tug, but pumping it yield nothing but dead drag screaming. I passed the rod to Ryan, with the intention to let him feel what is going on down there. Ryan pump for few cranks, and shake his head "Ah Ho is right". I released the bail arm after that, within seconds I got my jig back but of course the fish was gone.

Soon it was near dusk, skipper Ah Ho suggest to try for ang chor (golden snapper) at a spot not far away from the sea moutain, before we head to Pulau Jarak waters. I was having strong interest to observe how a seabed profile looks like at habitat of ang chor. In his cabin, Ah Ho pointed at seabed profile displayed at his KODEN sounder, and explained to me the uneven profiles with gap of 1m, estimated, are where ang chor and grouper would take the offering. Jigs were then sink, but no bite was registered.



On the 2nd day, Ah Ho came back to HMSM once more, as almost all anglers [me excepted... :-)] wanted to feel the GT power we had earlier day. We push off from Jarak island afternoon and reach HMSM about 2pm.

I jigged for about an hour, got tired and plain with typical size of GT below 5kg. During that time I think most anglers on board were rewarded with at least one GT except a newly met fishing buddy, Ziven. I understand from him that, the heaviest jig he brought was 150g, and he had only 2 or 3 pieces with him. He got with him few hula-hula too, a new octopus-alike-lure with beard, both his jig and hula2 were under weight for the current of 19th in Lunar calender. At one time Ziven got his line tangled with mine, while clearing the cha mee hoon, "something is pulling, something is pulling ... " Ziven said. At the same time the mess has cleared, I tried to hold the YGK braids, but it was a fish pulling! I sentak for 2 or 3 times then start cranking, and the fish is gone. Upon checking, my kevlar line was "cut". "A shark maybe?" I was so thought, while pressing blood from the cut at my finger caused by the rushing braids just seconds earlier.

Some time later Zevan shouting was heard, hahaha ... I followed the direction of the shout and was happy to see him holding his Shikari rod with C-curve, marking a hookup and fighting for his first fish-on- jig at front end of the boat. Minutes after he landed a GT with weight estimated at 4kg-ish. "Now everybody got fish!" I thought.

At about 6 30pm of the 2nd day, Ah Ho stop jigging at HMSM and heading to Pulau Sembilan. The journey took about 2 hrs and we reached Pulau Sembilan at 8 30pm. We were right at the transition time between 2 tides. I have had my bottom fishing setup prepared during the journey to Pulau Sembilan, and sink my bottom offer with mantis prawn. I understand from Ah Ho that there is a ditch right behind the boat. Sinker used was small, as I intend to let the current drift my offer into the ditch.

For initial 1st hour of the new tide, there was no take. First bite on the mantis prawn happened after the current was "aligned", about 9 30pm it was. I was chatting with Ryan and Ryan pointing at my rod and "fish biting!". The CX-4 with 80lb braids was effortless to surface the fish. I had a good look at the angchor, estimated about 3kg-ish. At that time there were about 7 anglers doing bottom at the boat and the first angchor did boost the spirit a bit.

The 2nd angchor took my bait, a recycled fresh sotong with head and body from 2 different squids, at approximately 11 30pm. It did not take long then the 4kg-ish angchor was on the board. I really love to see the natural color of golden snapper, red-ish and shining under the fluorescent light. The 2nd angchor was observed as having more round body compare with others, and fight like a 6kg-ish fish. Photo of my 2nd angchor, snapped by boatmate, Dron.

Right before the new tide finished, Ah Ho move GTC to a new spot, and get it longsided at a place, with the boat positioned for fishing at following tide that yet to be started. The spot is called "black rock", located not far from the Pulau Sembilan waters. It is the spot where almost all bottom anglers were rewarded with their angchor. Total number of angchor caught at this location was 6, weight from 1.5kg-ish to 3kg-ish. On top on this, there were few misses, some because of undersized leader went snapped, some due to broken undersized hooks.

The tough part was the correct tide started and the boat got aligned only by 2 30am. From that time onwards, there was only 2 rounds of frenzies, one during 4 30am and the other during 6 45am. There was no significant difference on preference of bait that angchor have took, both live squid and live mantis prawn were effective, at least during then.

I woke Ryan up on 5 20am, as I could observed, angchor have started biting and the dawn angchor frenzy that is typical at Pulau Sembilan waters, gonna start soon. Sea breeze was mild, and the boat was aligned with small angle with the current direction, "good orientation..." I was thinking. I was really keen to fish through the dawn frenzy, but mild headache brought me to bed at about 6 30am.

It was 9am when I woke up. I checked around and noticed only one anglers from the night shift was sleeping and the rest were active fishing already. I asked Ryan about the catch during the dawn, and Ryan was rewarded with one 3 kg-ish angchor. I was happy for him, as that marked the cheery popping of his new bottom setup; Mega-twin paired with Seeker 30-80lb rod.

After that Ah Ho tried on few others spots, but register no bites.

As all the boatmates were newly met except Ryan, I did not request Ah Ho to try the new spots as I wanted to. However I did bring the coordinates and discuss with Ah Ho, for whether there are any spots in there that were already in Ah Ho's collection of coordinates.

Well, this is not a real issue I guess, because "I shall return"

My Meetup with Ah Koon

I took the opportunity of my trip back to my home town and call Ah Koon on Saturday. Prior to that I called him and my intention was briefly mentioned to him, and I would say his reponse was encouraging.

On the phone, Ah Koon cheerfully agreed to meet up at jetty of Sg. Pinang. Sep 28, Sunday morning it was, I left my father-in-law house at some 10 30am, and reached Pangkor around 11 15am.

Ah Koon was a skipper that have his boat sold some 4 years ago and stopped doing fishing charter completely since then. My last fishing trip on his boat was September of 2003. in that trip, the whole group of us consists of 7 anglers, brought 4 x 100 qt. and another 3 smaller ice boxes, have them filled fully on the 2nd night of a 3D2N fishing trip. What made me remembered on that trip was, I had 4 huge takes on my offering that were not landable.

Not long after that trip, I left my employment and ventured into some sort of own business, and my desire to experience the awesome fish power has to put on hold temporarily. For some reason I could not forget the scene where a 60lb bottom rod bowed till water surface and 50lb braids been peeled ferociously. The awesome fish power was simply unforgettable. I have been telling myself "I will be back".

I called Ah Koon number and guided from the conversation I walked to a local kopitiam, some 50 ft. away from the Sg. Pinang Jetty （吉灵丸码头）. There he was, a mid age, well-build Chinese, sitting in the kopitiam, wave his hand at me.

From the talking then, I understand Ah Koon is operating a primary school canteen since he sold his boat off. We talked about general catch of commercial fisherman in Pangkor island, population of Pangkor that is dropping and plenty of other stuff. I told him my intention to meet him in Pangkor was because of my desire to repeat my experience on his boat, at that particular spot 5 years ago. Should he is not doing fishing charter business any longer, I am prepared to exchange GPS coordinates number of that and few more other spots with some monetary appreciation. That I am a simple but serious angler, were also explained to him. His coordinates will be with me not for fishing charter business but fulfilment of my chase to experience the power of unknown (but suspiciously Grouper) fishes.

We talked general stuff about fishing after that, and Ah Koon took the opportunities to explain to me methods of getting boat long sided at different orientation with different wind and current direction. Observation of fish bites rate at different winds at specific months was also explained to me. I really don't know how much I could absorb at that time, as he is those sort of person where once he started talking and the pace is in, he will keep talking, described the factors to observe for good dates, from one spot to another. "Arhhhh...I need a recorder" I was so thought.

Among others, there were about 4 spots that Ah Koon mentioned I must go there and try. One of it was a spot where he and other anglers on board hauled up ang chor, generally over 6kg-ish and have had ice boxes fulled at late midnight of the 1st night out. The biggest ang chor caught on rod-line in his 15 years++ of fishing charter experience is 9kg+ was also caught on that same spot.

From in-depth conversation later, I was a bit disappointed because I came to know he did not write down the GPS coordinates of the spot which I experienced 5 years ago, in his personal diary. That coordinates were recorded in his GPS console which passed on to the new owner of his boat. He looked at me and tell me that spot is "dirty", as numbers of weird fishing incidents happened at that spot.

"Like what?" I asked. There were few times, he said, well build angler like him, took great effort to pump a fish up. Upon surfaced, the fish that appeared was in no way matching the power of the tug-fight. "a kerapu that weight less than a kg ... Kai, you tell me, shouldn't it be effortless?"

"Errr ... ok, perhaps it is good that you don't have that coordinates with you now" I said. But still, I was disappointed deep inside me.

After we had our lunch at a restaurant nearby, Ah Koon took me to his house in Pangkor.

In his home, he sat down at the biggest table facing the house entrance and slowly open the drawer underneath and take out a book, very much alike with exercise book used in primary school, and flip page by page.

Written beside rows of GPS coordinate numbers were rows of chinese abbreviation, such as "红皂“，”白皂“， “大过“，“龙尖“ and many others. These are local names and perhaps his own way or writing those fish species; golden snapper, silver grunter, giant grouper and emperor fish respectively.

(Post-posting note: the chinese name of golden snapper is 红槽 as referred by fishbase.)

"Heart blood of 10 over years huh?" I said. He looked at me and smiled, slowly shake his head. Together with the book is another stack of A4 papers, photocopied obviously, written with numbers and numbers. Ah Koon explained to me that those were from his friends working on trawler boats. Those numbers were recorded when the skipper noticed some unusual profile at the seabed, and were passed to him hopefully someday Ah Koon will make a trip there and come back probably with fishing tales.

"Those were spots that I never tried, here in this book are all that I have tried and recorded", he said. He put on his reading glasses and go through the number, line by line. He asked me to write down specific numbers when he recalled the catch results at those spots. "Na ... this is the spot I told you just now, my biggest ang chor was caught here".

There are spots where good catches were recorded, but he said those were flat seabed and it will be impossible for fish resource to remain there, with frequent visiting of trawler boats. Generally he only requested me to note down spots where low profile rocks, ditches and sea mountain were present, for the simple reason the resources could be possibly protected under the physical condition.

I spent about an hour and a half with him with the numbers. At a glance I have about 30 spots, some north of Pangkor, some east of Pangkor and some South of Pangkor. Spots at sea moutain of Hutang Melintang were not recorded, however, because the spots were visited frequently by fishing charters around central Perak like Sea Garden (Ah Heng), GT Chaser (Ah Ho) and Tuna (Ah Chong).

It was about 4 30pm then I am done with Ah Koon on the GPS coordinates thingy. He took me to his merbuk cages right next to his house. We spent about 30 mins beside the cages then I decided to make a leave. I requested him to take me to an ATM and withdraw some money as my appreciation to him and he obliged.

We spent sometime at Sg Pinang jetty after that. During then I was told the past stories how he started his charter business with Ah Tiong of Seagull and the other friend, and later how the business was split.

I left the jetty at about a quarter to six, with Ah Koon waving his hand to me as my last sight on Pangkor Island.

I shall visit those spots very soon...I thought so when I was in ferry. Few sms were sent to few of my fishing buddies and deep in me I really look forward to test the bite rate at these spots.

~ End ~

My First Posting

Have been thinking to start my own blog since May I think. Was hesitate back then as I was not certain whether to do it on blogger webs or my own domain.

Anyway ... like the saying goes "a journey to a thousand miles start with the very first step"