20 Dec 2011: ILL-fated fishing day...

Everything started brightly and we were so hopeful for the day...
- weather was good with clouds, wind, some sun and passing rain.

Crew: 4 and Capt Anand
AO: Supposed to be Tekong and Johor Shoal

North Star's steering cable gave way after my diesel topup and alas, we had no choice but to secure the boat to the oil tanker off P.Ubin...
Damn Sway man!
Made a call back to marina and asked for rescue boat to tow us back.

Decided to release my Volitan Lionfish, Black Clown and Sweetlips clown here as hopes of fishing were all gone...
Aside to my wifey, here is the hard evidence that I really released them. They looked so happy during the process...

Finally, the rescue boat came and here is my very first towed experience:

Actually, quite shiok...slow and steady cruise and I enjoyed the wind.

As we were chatting away, an idea popped when Kelvin 'volunteered' his boat as the back-up. His 23 footer just did some maintenance over the weekend and yes, I thought I'm going to bring some groupers back today.

(Back at the marina)
Kelvin's boat was cool - very clean, spacious for fishing and I thought we were ready for the kill.
But, DAMN!!! Just as he started the engine ignition, the engine refused to start. Got the mechanic over and managed to got it started.
Then we steered it to the other side to top up petrol and alas, it refused to start again...
Another disappointment!

Even the backed up plan failed! I think we were not fated to fish today and we chose the wrong day...
BUT, my consolation prize - made 2 new and nice friends (John and Kevin who are father and son too). Had a good time chatting away under very very nice weather conditions.
Also, Anand and I had some good fun cheap thrill jigging assam fish off the pontoon while the mechanic was fixing the engine.

'King' Anand's Day

 All the conditions were right for fishing - tide, weather, current, wind... and Anand shared his high hopes for 'giants' (5kgs) at a new site...

We started at our usual playground and it was a bad start...I was hopefully to find back my lost 3kg KBL and all we got were zeros...

Time to advance to the new site and hopes were indeed high when we found 3 other boats were there. Wait was the game and current were good... Soon, Anand's nephew got a big take and then followed by me... I reeled up a nice size (900g) AC and realized that it was a fouled hook up. The hook used was Anand's nephew and it was a messy char bee hoon of our lines. Who cares as long as we got the fish up.

Anand's time came shortly with a good size kaci aka painted sweetlips. I was surprised that it did not put up a good fight for that size and probably Robin was right that the fish was too much in pain to fight since it was hooked in its gut.

It was Anand's show again and this time was an excellent 1.5kg size Harry Hotlips aka Brown Sweetlips. Ideal for claypot curry fish head.

I guessed the water was a bit cold from the continuous rain on Friday and made the biggies lazy and loss of appetite...

It was a good day for Anand and the rest enjoyed the company and the wind.