Raw prawns

A battle between the living and the dead

This week we solved the live bait versus dead bait in the dead’s favour. We catch more off a raw prawn bought at the market and chopped into bite-sized pieces. It’s also a heck of a lot cheaper and easier than running out to get the live bait the morning of fishing. As interesting as that journey might be the first or second time.

I’m sure the seasoned professionals will beg to differ, my old reference the Jack Pollard encyclopaedia of fish says the live prawn is ‘deadly’ for many fish. I remain unconvinced.

I was always a bit squeamish about handling live prawns anyway. The little buggers jump for their lives when you try and grab them. Sometimes my hands are sure but mostly I’m as jumpy as the prawns. “This one has a bit of backbone,” 2Rodz said whilst we were out this week describing a particularly lively one. “Did you just say a prawn has backbone?” You-Remember-Geoff said quickly, never one to miss an exoskeleton gag. Old 2Rodz has that name because he once lost two rods overboard in a single morning. You-Remember is a personal nickname between me and my wife for my buddy Geoff because she was in the habit of forgetting his name, until I added the You-Remember to the front. We have a few friends who are privately prefixed You-Remember. It isn’t helped by my fondness for finding friends called Jim.

I do have other friends though and one of the longest standing of the fishing crew - a man who likes to keep a low profile and wouldn’t appreciate his name being mentioned in public, no not another Jim - has just become a dad for the first time, on Christmas Day. A baby girl who emerged into the world at 5.54pm. Congratulations big fella. New children are only a few years off becoming new fishing buddies, at least that’s what we all hope.

The other big news of the week is that we finally caught another big fish. This time a diamond trevally. While I didn’t catch this one I did get to take it home and do the honours with a filleting knife.

I think we’ve finally found a good spot, after many months of lurking in places where we didn’t have a long enough anchor chain to set down and the currents would send us packing from where we wanted to be long before we could make the most of a spot with fish. If you want an example of the power of the current off Singapore, this is the mark off Sentosa with the tide running out, I had to motor my JetSki at 9kmh to stay level with it.

We found a little corner west of Raffles Lighthouse (Pulau Satumu) where the current is light and you head in the right direction away from the various restricted zones around the live firing range on Pulau Senang and the lighthouse restricted zone around Pulau Satumu.

We’ve left this area alone for the last few weeks because there were live firing exercises going on and we didn’t want another run in with the police coast guard for accidentally doing the wrong thing. We had two such incidents some months back when our boat’s AIS beacon was malfunctioning resulting in a verbal warning on each occasion for myself, not to mention the interruption to fishing time. It’s a good reminder that even though it might seem like there’s little I can do to ensure everything is tip top on a self-drive charter boat, it is still my responsibility as the master of the vessel. Thankfully The Boat Shop Asia, who we rent with are really good at these things and they’ve fixed the AIS and most importantly put the device in a position where we can see it. This was one of the problems when we were pulled up, it was buried in the electronics and we couldn’t tell if it was working. Turned out it had a blown fuse, but all good now.

Jigging

Never one to be content I’m trying to learn how to jig with a lure. The jig I’ve been recommended by AJ’s Tackle is weirdly named a butt crack jig. No word of a lie.

I lost my butt crack on the second cast a few days later when I tried a little more jigging in a solo expedition on a Seadoo Fishpro. The lesson learned, remove the lure from your rod before you blast to a new location. Otherwise they seem to break free from the line in transit or wear the line thin. Two lures lost. Solo fishing from a ski is a new experience. I enjoy the solitude, the closeness to the water, and the peace and quiet. The joy of also being able to break the solitude with a high-speed scoot to a new location is also exhilarating. After I met one of Singapore’s leading jet ski fishing exponents who let me in on a few new spots to try. We’ll have to see how they go.

Yes, that’s Singapore in the background. Ahh the serenity.