Desaru Jigging and Casting with Tekong Badol

The spanish mackeral (batang) season was in full force at Desaru this year and surely the Baktao had to make a trip up himself with the usual kakis including Boatman Shawn. Jackson pintails and an array of casting lures with jigs were prepared before hand. It was kind of exciting as I hadn't had freshly cooked batang porridge for a long time now.

Desaru is a short 1 hour drive from Singapore and we had our breakfast at the usual breakfast spot - a combination of Nasi Lemak, Mee Goreng, Fried Chicken, Kopi and Teh Susu. Our ice, drinks and lunch were also bought here and the guys stopped for a poop at the toilet before we loaded up and made our way to the launching point - a secluded beach known as Kg Lompang. It was quite a dirty beach especially during low tide but that didn't stop couples from taking their marriage photos there!

The fried chicken has really improved!

Sweet coffee ala malaysian style

The famous boatman Shawn

The weather was cruel to us though and rain/swell/winds were on the agenda. The boat wouldn't stop rocking and we couldn't cast properly as the storm battered us. The storm limited us to a sheltered unjam spot as we itched to get to the more productive deeper spots as the current was now at full blast! But no.... we had to wait.... and Shawn whom was unusually hardworking (usually the case at the start of trips) had a big hit on his Jackson Pintail (usually not the case as well)! There were also strangely no moans of frustrations as fishes usually get away during the first 10 seconds of the fight when it's with Boatman Shawn.... Shawn was pumping his fish crazily and this was not a wise thing to do as you are accelerating the burst off process by putting more friction into the teeth of the mack even if you are using wire leader. The best way to fighting tengerri would be to always keep line taunt and in direction of the fish while you lead the fish in slowly (so the wire/leader doesn't go sideways and gets sliced of) - some people believe in using brute force to faster haul the fish in (before wire/leader gives way due to abrasion) and this may be a good method too.

OMG he landed the first fish - 14 pounder

bonito

super gomoku



tengeri papan on super skarp

super skarp closeup



super gomoku

another papan on super gomoku chrome

The bites stopped after this though (probably because Shawn got a fish) but the rain and winds were beginning to die down too.... so we head off to more productive spots in the open sea and were duly rewarded some tengerri papan and batang when the current was ebing. Interestingly, the fishes only responded to slow jigging with flutter actions on the drop. This is the first time I have encountered shy macks!

The storm super gomoku and super skarp proved deadly on the flutter action here as we landed quite a few tengs with them.... Weiyee was the main super star here - his jerk stop trademark method hitting good fishes.

But as the current came to a stop, the bites ceased too and as it was the Malaysian Election Day, we opted to end the exercise at 3pm and head home to avoid trouble later on....

reasonable catch for bad weather

the standard pose

And this were the results of a reasonable mack expedition.... sliced up some batang for fish soup and had 163 Kimly Seafood prepare yao zham tengeri papan!

looks very sashim-able

 Trip Video