Reward finally! Sort of have a long dry spell (Labrador Park & St John)

Recently, I have sort of fishing curse set upon me. I seems to be having terrible luck whenever I goes fishing, not having any bites and worse of all, busted lines when I least expect it to happen.

Well please allow me to forget about my fishing trips for the last couple of months, it is really really bad, so bad that I wanted to take a long long break away from fishing. However, as the fishing itch comes, damn you just forget about those horrible past trips and hope that you will get some decent hook up at your next trip.

For the past week, I made 3 fishing trip, one familiar place for me, St John island, and twice at an long time fisho haunt, Labrador park.



St John Island - 30 Aug 11
Always look forward to fish at this island, I really love this place and all the southern islands. Of course one of it's major attraction for me is the clean clear water, but however, for some unknown reasons, they put a long string of buoy across on one side of the causeway, as shown in the picture above. That kind of takes away my plans of fishing for todak on that side, so no other choice but to go for queenie then.  And yeah, I did manage to get one queenie hookup, and with me damn worried that it cross that roll of buoy, I proceeded to pull it so the side and hope to clear away from the obstacle and fight it on clean open waters.

But alas, when I drag it to the swallow waters, it made a mad dash for the deeper waters, my 8lbs leader is no match for the rocky bottom and the line expectedly snapped. Bullocks! Once again, another one gets away. As at the time the tide is about to change, I forgo fishing for a while and let the current switch to my preferred side with clean open waters for todak.

Once the current changes, the fishing for todak starts, and within minutes we have hitting todak after todak, but they are small little ones, we don't seems to be able to get pass a wall of small todaks without our baits being whacked. After a while, things cool downs, and we are getting better sized todaks but still kind of small, as I need some todak meat for my doggie, I decided to keep some of them.  However, by mid afternoon, we could see the rain coming and decided to call it a day. took an earlier ferry back.  Too bad I lost a queenie again, but felt better after a long bout of terrible fishing luck. Before I leave, manage to take some pics of those cats which resides on the island, although I am not much of a cat lover, they do look damn beautiful, wonder if any one of them is the 'Singapura Cat'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GLoomis NR1382
Shimano Alivio 2500 (Modified)
4, 5, 6 lbs braided line, joined, with 8lbs leader.
Running float rig.


Out of My comfort zone, Labrador Park - 01 Sep 11
I have fished at Labrador park when I am still a tiny kid, back fishing there again when I pick up fishing again when I grew up, and never ever do I have any decent catch there. However, I have known for donkeys years that rabbit fish is almost always available there but I have yet to try it there. DesT, caught my attention when he mentioned that he saw some very very decent sized rabbit fish there recently, so off we go to explore how can we catch rabbit fish here, in actually fact, it is more of a exploratory trip for us as both of us almost never been catching rabbit fish locally, I only catches them on Sibu kelong.

Once again, which is quite often, we missed our target time to be at the park as that timing is what we expect the rabbit fishes to come close to the shore. We fished for a while with bread, DesT got a parrot fish for his dinner table while I get nothing. It is not a case of the rabbit fishes not appearing, they are around, but with other more experience anglers and ourselves not getting any rabbit fishes, we need a radical re-think, and a new strategy to target them.  Although our thoughts on baits and presentation are generally align, I however prefer not to use slow action rods while DesT insisted using the noodle rod.

We sort of conclude that there are only 2 major factors, baits and presentation.
Baits - Our hands are kind of tied here, other then bread, potato, corns and gargo, we are limited. We have no idea where to get the green string like seaweeds, so we are left with the usual baits.
Presentation - It is a no-brainer, given the terrain, it has have to be a floating rig, however we conclude that we might a better chance if the bait is presented close to the bottom rather then surface.

The day ended when gave up trying as we know we will not get any given our rigging method, we just have to come back with a new rigging method.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shimano Convergence IM6 6'6"
Shimano Slade 1000 (Unmodified)
Unknown strength braided line (Est 15lbs), with 8lbs leader.
Floating Rig


Coral Trout at the end of the Rainbow, Labrador Park - 04 Sep 11

Well, not actually at the end of the rainbow, rather end of the week. After a rough patch of arse-luck and lousy fishing, I finally manage to get a very decent fish.

DesT called me the day before, he have made some new floats for our rabbit fishing hunting, however we could not get any seaweeds so we use bread for this trip. We started the day almost 3hrs before the tide reaches it's peak, as the water level still kind of low, I decided to take it easy, however DesT started off trying out his new floats.

After almost 2 hrs for trying for rabbit fishes, we have yet to catch one, then I heard the ice-cream man bell ringing, weather is warm and ice-cream sounds like good. So off I go to grab myself a soothing ice-cream and a pee-break.  When I am back, DesT gave me a look, I can tell he have finally gotten something, he refuse to tell me what it is, except to open up the cooler box myself to take a look.  As I am expecting to see a good sized rabbit fish, I am in shock when I see a coral trout! Not big but definitely table size, holy shit, how did he manage to get one. After learning more from him, to hell with the rabbit fish, I just have to go for the coral trout.

After almost for an hour or so, I finally got a hooked up, not too sure what it is, but the way it is swimming so close to the rocky bottom, I had to adopt a strange fishing posture, basically to keep the line as high as possible to prevent it for being cut, I am on a 8lb shock leader (I have to admit, I am lazy to change to a heavier poundage), any nick against the rock could just snap the line. The fight is actually quite fast, as I didn't dare to prolong it, using the incoming tide waves, I lifted the fish onto the sloping bank. And it turn out to be a very nice sized coral trout! I am so bloody happy, after a long long period of bad fishing, I managed to get a decent sized fish and a pretty good one that it.

The rest of the day with us trying mainly for coral trouts and rabbit fish occasionally, DesT landed his 2nd one close to evening time and with the tide going out, we decided to call it a day.  We are very pleased with our day's catch, 3 coral trouts and zero rabbit fish.  Will we be back again, very likely, we need to learn how to catch those rabbit fish, but for now, we are just pleased with a very nice fish for our dinner table.

Apologies for not able to share the rig setup, as it is pretty much in experiment and also hard to explain in words. I will try in future to give more details.
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shimano Convergence IM6 6'6"
Shimano Slade 1000 (Unmodified)
Unknown strength braided line (Est 15lbs), with 8lbs leader.