Southern Island fishing with Uncle Lim #2 - Grouper & Sagai

Arranged another fishing trip on Uncle Lim's boat. This time, there was only 3 of us. We set off after getting our live prawns. Uncle Lim suggested we try using madai again at the first spot as there were reports of fish biting and unable to bring up. So we spent 3hrs at the spot with our madais. We tried all sorts of colors of madai but not a single hookup. We actually lost 4 madai between us during the 3hrs! Not a very good return!

So we abandoned our madai and moved to another spot. I had bought this new type of hook called Tainawa and from what I understand, it was used as a hook for long-liners. It's like a circle hook but square shaped. The point is 90degrees to the shank. I had rigged it up as a Apollo setup and hooked a live prawn and sent it down. About 10mins later, I felt my prawn flicking about, meaning something was chasing it! I quickly free-spooled my Talica II and felt the line going out. My heart was racing at this time as I'm not supposed to strike because the Tainawa work the same way as circle hooks. Counted to 8 and slowly engaged the spool and lifted up the rod. When the rod loaded up, I started to reel in quickly. Fish ON! This fella gave a pretty good fight and shortly thereafter, it surfaced. It was an Orange-Spotted Grouper. Nice sized too! Lip-gripped the fella and I could see how the hook penetrated the fish. It wasn't the textbook "corner of the mouth" hookup but actually at the top of the mouth. It was a solid hook-set, luckily the Dupont 30lb mono line held up on the Apollo rig. After unhooking the fish, I could feel some abrasion on the mono line just above the hook. A few head shakes would have been all it took to sever the mono line due to the sharp, raspy teeth of the Grouper. I weighed the Grouper and it was 1.6kg. Nice!

We continued fishing at the spot but the current and wind was too strong to hold our position near the structure. We decided to move to another spot to try for bottom fish.

At the next spot, we had many small nibbles on our live prawns. Every time we reeled back to check our bait, all that was left was the section of prawn that was attached to the hook. The rest of the prawn was missing. These fish must really be expert pickers! Finally, Shawn had a decent take and reeled in this fish. At first,  I thought it was a Spanish Flag Snapper but upon closer inspection, it didn't have the sharp teeth of a typical Snapper. Also the shape of the head is closer to a Sweetlip. Upon some research and posting on Fishingkaki.com, I managed to identify the fish as a Yellow-Striped Sweetlip.

Uncle Lim now suggested we go try to catch some Sagai. We anchored up and changed our rigs to sabiki. At this time, there was a huge thunderstorm moving in over the west and central Singapore. Luckily, we were still ok out on the water. As we were fishing for the Sagai, we spotted a big school of fish crashing the surface. Couldn't make out what they were but some of us decided to change to micro jigs and try to tempt them to hit our jigs. I cast out and did a fast retrieve but they weren't interested. Uncle Lim was the first to hook up a Sagai and soon Shawn was hooked up too. I quickly changed back to sabiki and tossed it out back. Shawn was lucky that he had 3 Sagais on his sabiki but as he brought it close to the boat, one dropped but still managed to bring the other 2 on board. I soon also had a hit. I was using my new Shimano Curado baitcast reel and it was taking our some line. This fish is feisty! Uncle Lim advised to play the fish slowly and not pump the fish too hard as they have soft mouths. Pulling too hard may tear the hook out of the soft mouth. Soon I had the fish on board. Decent sized fish!

Shawn had another hookup that he thought was a few more Sagai. But soon the fish shot up to do some acrobatics and shown itself as a Queenfish. Due to the acrobatics, the fish had entangled itself in the sabiki hooks and Shawn just reeled in the fish.

As the thunderstorm was still raging on the island, we stayed at sea a bit longer so that the storm would pass. So we finished our fishing a bit later than normal. Good decision because when we reached the launch point, it had stopped raining.

Not a great days fishing but we still had some fun catching the Sagais and some quality bottom fish.

Gear used:
Rod - Okuma Nomad Travel 3-piece PE1-2 / Shimano TCurve Revolution Baitcast 6-10kg(PE1.3-2.2)
Reel - Shimano Talica 8 II / Shimano Curado I
Line - Fireline Tracer 40lb / Spiderwire Stealth 15lb
Bait - live prawn
Rig - Apollo style

Fish ID - Orange-Spotted Grouper (Epinephelus coioides)
             - Sagai aka Bumpnose Trevally (Carangoides Hedlandensis)
             - Yellow-Striped Sweetlips (Plectorhincus chrysotaenia)
             - Queenfish (Scomberoides commerson)