Sport Fishing Explorer Trip #12 - Great to be back on the boat!

Been looking forward to this extended trip on Sports Fishing Explorer for some time. Weather has been windy the last few days and looks like it's going to be a bumpy trip out there.

Due to 'new' immigration rules, we are now required to stop at Nongsa Marina in Batam to clear our Indonesian immigration before we could proceed out to fish. Was just a quick 1hr stop to get everything sorted out. Pretty clean waters for a marina and managed to spot this pretty mini sea feather.

Our first target for the trip was squids. We needed them as bait and they taste pretty awesome too! Reached the spot and began bottom dropping using 3-squid jig setups. Soon we were getting hookups. And they were pretty good sized squids. I even managed to get a full house!

Everybody was getting in on the action and soon we had what we need for bait as well as a feed.

Ghostly squid!

Night fishing was rather slow initially. Some fish were caught but nothing big except some Ah Sengs!

Squids in the morning.

Next day, we moved from spot to spot but try as I might, I wasn't getting any hookups. When I tried using my Berkley Gulp 2-inch Crab soft plastic, the fishes were laughing at me and decided to teach me a lesson!

And when I did catch a fish, it turned out to be the un-wanted Lizard fish. Quite a big fella!

Or I get taxed by the taxman! Grrrrr!!!!!

The biggie caught was a 5ft White-Spotted Wedgefish aka Shovel-nose Ray. Sean spent 3hrs to subdue the fella because he hooked it using a light setup with only 30lb line!

Next afternoon, finally caught something of note. This fish took my squid strip and ran. Managed to subdue him and it turned out to be a Batfish! Decent-sized but gave quite a good fight.

A short while later, as I was feeding my lightly-weighted running sinker rig far behind the boat, I came up tight to another fish. Slowly brought it up and it was a Tofu fish aka Yellowtail Fusilier

All in all, it wasn't a great trip for me, fishing-wise but fishing with a great bunch of anglers is always the best way to de-stress. All the fish were cleaned and divided equally. And as always, the crew of Sports Fishing Explorer are helpful, jovial and cook the best meals at sea!

A few pictures of our catch.

Gear used:
Rod - BlackMarket Slow Jig PE 3-5
Reel - Shimano Talica 8 II
Line - Fireline Tracer 40lb
Bait - Live prawn, live squid
Rig - Apollo, ranggong

Fish ID - Batfish (Platax teira)
             - Yellowtail Fusilier (Caesio cuning)