Its Oct again! ~ the best month of the year to do iso fishing. Today we choose kusu island to set our hooks :). After the 9am ferry sets off from marina south pier, the weather starts to change and become cloudy – looks like its going to rain.
Its still very cloudy when we reach St John jetty. If it is your first time taking the ferry, St John island is the first stop and Kusu island is next.
Visitors to St John island do not look very happy in this cloudy weather. We are feeling just the opposite, becuase rainy days usually lead to fishing frenzy 😀
While waiting for ferry to depart from St John island and heading to Kusu Island, I am admiring this iso reel that I borrowed from a friend. It is light weight and has very smooth reeling actions. However, the mechanics inside are not as lasting as my other china made reel which is slight heavier but more sturdy.
About 30 min later, we reach kusu island. Without any delay, we rush to the spot and setup our stuff in no time ~ the fishes are waiting.
I decid to use this reel instead. This is a new shimano iso hyper force reel a friend bought for me from Taiwan. Apparently he told me that it is cheaper in Taiwan than in Japan. It costs slighly over 500sgd which is a typical price for a mid ranged shimano reel.
Berley is ready and we were all good to go. I use mainly bread skin for fish chum. Whereas my friend uses commercial berley mixed with bread skin.
The current and tide is just perfect when we start to fish. Here is our first fish of the day – a golden brown parrot fish.
Many heart pounding strikes afterwards, here is another one that’s worth mentioning – a big spinefoot or Peh Tor.
During the end of the year, various fish species come to the shallow to spawn. It is the time of the year that they are likely to feed all day long in order to store up enough energy for spawning later. This is especially true for various spinefoot (peh tor) species, they are fierce and very strong fighters. The frenzy period usually starts from september and lasts all the way till March the following year.
Surprisingly, this sucker fish bumps onto my hook by accident. It is extremely rare to see sucker fishes here in the shallow waters. When you see them, it usually means sharks are nearby!
Sucker fishes are junk food eaters, they are often too lazy to swim but stick themsleves onto the bodies of sharks and eat wherever leftovers by the shark.
“Look! What I have caught!”
Now, this is the fish that I have to give a special mention here. This is a rare fish that only comes to the shallow water during end of the year. They call it “bai mao” or “白毛” in Taiwan. They are often one of the primary target fish species in japan and taiwan where iso fishing is popular. However, very few anglers in singapore, where iso fishing is still new, knows about the existence of this fish, because only iso fishing method combined with our special bait can hook them out of the water.
Some anglers are still hard at work despite the occasional drizzles.
After about 3 hours of non stop fishing fun. The tide finally went down. Since the day is still early, we decide to clean the fishes by the rocks before heading back home.
When extremely low tide, all the rocks below are exposed in the open. It is very hard to imagine that 4 hours ago, there were hundreds of fish swiming around them.
Finally, here is our catch of the day! Its caught by 3 anglers for about 3.5 hours fishing. Total catch weights at about 13kg. Do join us next time if you too want to give it a try 🙂
Cleaning the fishes is tough work. It takes three of us about 45min to clean all the fishes.
One tip I want to share with you is that cleaning the fish using sea water is much better than using tap water. Reason being sea water is all natural whereas tap water has a lot of chemicals which is not very good for long term storage of fish meat in the freezer.
Finally, after a long day of heart pounding angling action, we are packed and ready to head home for a wonderful fish buffet!
