Southern Island fishing with Uncle Lim #5 - Slow trip again (Just me!)

Been a while since I've fished on Uncle Lim's boat. Today the target fish are Blackspot Tuskfish aka Eng Ko and Diamond Trevally aka Chermin.

Set off early and first spot was for Sagai aka Trevally. As it turns out, it was Bumpnosed Trevally. Tried using micro jigs but they weren't interested. Switched to sabikis and managed to catch 4-5 palm-sized pieces. Quite fun on light tackle.

After that quick workout, we headed to Eng Ko spots. Moved between a few spots and the other anglers were catching quite a few table-sized specimens. In amongst the catches were also some pretty decent sized Spanish Flags aka Tee Boon.

I caught my first fish of the trip but it wasn't an Eng Ko. This is an Anchor Tuskfish. Small fella so I released it.

Current wasn't moving much today, was using only small bean sinkers on my running sinker rig. But somehow, some fish managed to perfectly remove the prawn meat and leave me the shell!

Other anglers were pulling up some nice Chermin and more Eng Ko's with some Tee Boon thrown in. And I'm still stuck on 1 fish......

After lunch we moved to a deeper water spot and I started to fish. Finally a fish took my bait and was taking out some line on my Shimano Curado baitcaster. Uncle Lim was afraid that it might be a big Eng Ko and bury me in some rocks so he told me to keep pumping it off the bottom. In between the short bursts of line stripping, I tried to pump up and reel back till I finally felt the fish under control. Reeled it up and it turned out to be a big Painted Sweetlips aka Kaci. This fella gave quite a good fight!

A short while later, I had another take but this time I could tell it was a smaller fish. Turned out to be a juvenile Red Spot Emperor aka Leng Chiam.

During the last few minutes of fishing, one angler hooked up and when he brought the fish up, there were whoops of joy as it was a nice sized Coral Trout aka Ang Gao! Lucky angler!

We finished up our live prawns and headed back to the jetty.

Pretty decent catch but I was the one who didn't catch much fish.

Gear used

Rod - Berkley Nomadic Travel Trigger PE0.8-1.2

Reel - Shimano Curado 201HG

Line - generic 20lb braid

Bait - Live prawn

Rig - Running sinker with size 1 hook

Fish ID - Anchor Tuskfish (Choerodon anchorago)

             -  Kaci aka Painted Sweetlips (Diagramma pictus)

             - Red Spot Emperor aka Leng Chiam (Lethrinus lentjan)