OFF KUALA PERLIS FISHING

Last July 9th i went fishing off Kuala Perlis with my son, father in-law and two relatives after almost two years absence from sea fishing. Two years is like an eternity for anglers! Actually i had a trip planned a year before but after spending some money to buy some gears for the trip, it was called off due to bad weather.  I had done some fishing inland, like canals, river mouth and from beaches before this trip but nothing beats fishing at sea. The problem with arranging for a trip to sea is that you got to have all the pieces together i.e your fishing buddies are free, the boatman is not busy for the chosen date and the weather must be right.

Jetty area in Kuala Perlis

Our boat - about 24foot long fibreglass boat

So for this trip we were going to target either Golden Snappers or Groupers fishing over man-made reef mostly made of concrete blocks. The water was not deep averaging 8 to 10 meters. The fishing strategy for this trip was bottom fishing using light tackles 10-20lb spinning, baitcaster and jigging rods, braided lines 10-20lb Power-Pro, about a meter fluorocarbon leader 30lb, running round sinkers,round hooks with cut fish bait, squid and live prawns. I wanted to try micro jigging but the water was too shallow.

Yours truly holding an action cam

The boatman guiding the boat through the river

My son Amin's second trip to sea

An array of fishing tackle ready for action

A lot of birds along the river

A White-collar Kingfisher

Fishing boats lining up the river

Loading pier for fishermen catch

Jetty for Langkawi Island ferries

A floating mosque during low tide

our fishing ground between Kuala Perlis and P.Langkawi

We started to move out of the pier around 7.30am and started fishing around 8.00am. The fishing was slow for the first two hours while looking for the right spots. The boat that was supposed to deliver the live prawns came late around 10.30am. Only after using the live prawns we started to see action with two nice size Croakers.

The first good size croaker aka Gelama

The second croaker aka Gelama

Then a small baby ray took the bait meant for the grouper.

A baby stingray or Tuka

We had to try a few more spots before the first grouper was caught. 

Amin's first ever grouper using live shrimp

A happy dude!

My son did not catch a single fish until he got his first good size grouper. Actually that was his first ever grouper it was a lot bigger that i have ever caught in my whole life, i was happy for him.

Romzi posing with the biggest grouper of the day

The biggest grouper was caught a few minutes after my son got his grouper by the boatman using hand line. It was almost 3 Kg in size. After around 3.00pm the wind started to pick up speed and the water became very choppy. We could not even stand up without falling over! We continued fishing until 5.00pm without catching anything. We decided to call it a day as the fish was not biting at all.

I was not very happy at all with this trip because i did not catch a single fish despite using the same gear, technique and bait, i could not believe my luck, never ever happened before in my whole fishing history!! Well, i have to accept it, it was their day not mine. There will be the next time i am sure, and it will be soon i promise you, you will see in my next post!

That big grouper ended up as sweet and sour fish dish for dinner

Well, for your info i am planning for the second trip in September, same spots but this time i want to try some popping and jigging, lets see if could catch any fish or not. Until next time, happy fishing guys.

Cheers.