Beautiful coral trouts and fingermark snappers. Two of my fishing idols. Matt and Biao. Good time with usual kakis. Beautiful coral trout by Boon. His first local one. Law with his usual ang gao luck! So smirky :p It's been awhile since we went fishing from Sam Law and he is still as sharp as ever! Two trips with him yielded much food for the table for us with big tusk fish and coral trouts taking home all the glory. I always believe that if you want to "judge" or see if a particular fishing captain knows his stuff, always look at how he does bottom fishing.  Red and green fish are more valuable than pelagics like sagai. Best of all? Sam doesn't need to go to Raffles Lighthouse to get good fish and recently told me "if you want me to bring you catch sagai, I will cancel your booking". What a captain. Go green or red or go home! Sam Law's contact can be found at  https://baktao.blogspot.com/2021/08/7-recommended-fishing-charters-and-cost-sharing-boat-in-s...

Fishing after the circuit breaker was awesome. It seemed that everywhere we went, we would have good catches. All good things come to an end though and the fishing in the past few months has been dreary. The bad and unpredictable weather made it worse. So today really put a smile in my heart since everyone managed to get some fun even though it was mostly escapee fish that we caught. These fish really were strong and healthy! Strong and healthy was good because there are growing rumours of one of the fish farms "dumping all their sick fish". That particular farm has all its nets raised and has totally no fish left. And you wonder why boats go there everyday to fish... sick fish. Some tips for catching escapee/farmed fish: Bouncing your rig around and searching for them helps. Cast out and comb the area for them. Some of the fish tap on the bait lightly and some of them eat the bait and stay put. Sensitivity is key here. Set the hook well. "Dead" bait like tamban and...

Quite a bit of Emails regarding this blog post . Put some of my replies here in case more folks read this. Q: The mentioned fishing charters are fully booked. Do you have any more recommendations? A: I don't have any more recommendations because I only put down charters which I have fished before or fished regularly at. Try to book early in advance. Q: There are many charter companies out there when I Google, is it a must to take a trip with them? A: No, it is not. These charter companies usually charge a higher fee but they make up for it in things like service and they may include fishing guides (note that they usually don't pay their share). You can go straight to the charter captains to arrange a trip directly. Q: Are there any seasons to book the fishing charters? Any monsoon? A: Charters are all year round in Singapore because our monsoon is mild and there are plenty of inshore options. There used to be predictable seasons for certain fishes but these days due to climate ...

My "Medium" King Salmon from Greenwood Fish Market I seldom am a fussy eater. I generally eat all kinds of food and as long as it's relatively fresh, I can forgive small issues such as service and even subtle points in the food preparation. However, I got a rather shocking and terrible experience at Greenwood Fish Market Quayside Isle recently because everything was bad (ok, the calamari was decent) so much so that I wrote reviews immediately after dining in. I mean, for a meal that costs $300 for two, it surely deserved a little more standards. I'm rarely that "vengeful" but it was too much... It's safe to say that I will never visit this restaurant again.  "Lost" Servers The servers were lost if I could put it nicely. When I asked for recommendations on the oysters and what would be a good mix, the server just said "order this and this and this" without explaining why. I went ahead and ordered the three kinds recommended anyway and ...

It's not often that I go freshwater luring fishing in Singapore. I probably do that once or only twice a year. And it's because of the lack of time, lack of excitement and that I simply cannot go to non conventional spots anymore and we all know how much difference that makes. There comes a time though that you just want to wet your lines and then there are a few fish that appear to entertain you. That happened today at USR legal fishing ground (can you believe it?) as the schooling Temensis (or Peacock Bass or whatever you call it) came within casting distance and were basically taking jigs and lures the moment they saw them. Talk about not needing any skill at all. It was really fun though as Shawn and me reminisced about those times we regularly went for freshwater fishing sorties... Not much tips here. Simply cast near or into the school and you'll get a hit. If you can't reach them, try jigs, spoons and heavy rubbers to get the distance. Shawn and me last count on ...

Can I still do eging? Can I still catch a squid? These were the questions running around in my head as I went for a last minute eging trip with the famous Fisherrmanfan. Fisherrmanfan (also known as Yifan) is going eging with me for his very first time and I was supposedly the "pro". Problem was that I haven't been shore eging for maybe almost a decade! Fished out some of very old eging jigs from my storage space and realised I was already out of stock for my favourite Yamashita egi jigs. Ahhh never mind, I still had trusty Lamses, Cofita and Technic cheap squid jigs. I bought these for 50 cents to a dollar in the past!  I still had my cheap egis! No eging rod and reel? Ahhh never mind, brought my micro jigging setup (St Croix 6-12lbs and Shimano Vanquish C3000). Eging was still the same. Squids still come at certain timing. Punggol End Jetty still has some squids. But I guess the season hasn't really reached. The eging ah laus were still there but I was shocked to...

Offshore Fishing in Changi has sort of seen a revival in recent times and it isn't entirely due to fish stocks recovering. Released fishes due to religious groups and escapees from extensive fish farming have led to snapper and grouper populations being elevated. There is some recovery though and we have seen migrating fish such as some Threadfin Salmon, Cobia, Jewfish returning to Changi waters. These kinda fishes were non existent in the early 2000s when Changi was still recovering from land reclamation. It's weird but it's fairly certain that the current fishing fun we are having at Changi is mostly man made. If we just relied on wild fish, we wouldn't have much to show for! Anyway, fishing with Dad is getting rarer these days and I'm very grateful to be able to go fishing with him this day. He had all the luck today as he landed three very good sized fishes and out fished me. He even lost one very huge fish and all this while insisting that he use a mono line ov...

Although I have lost count if how many times I went offshore fishing at Changi, nothing is as sweet and rare as seeing a Kurau landed right before your eyes. And a beautiful one at that! Kelvin landed this beauty of a fish on relatively light offshore tackle and to see that golden sheen on the fish was unreal. It wasn't a day with much quantity but very good sizes! Very happy for the guys that they managed to score some as we have lost some monsters during our previous trips. Weighed: Kurau - 5.5kg Barramundi - 4kg I went home, gutted and scaled the barramundi and steamed the slices the very next day. Recipe to steam for 5 minutes: Some ginger slices Rock sugar water Light soy sauce Pepper Minced garlic