Getting hooked

I have always held the belief that fishing is a fiercely personal activity shared by father and son. So I rather surprised myself when I found myself on my way to Yishun to join my friends on their fishing trip this morning.



Located on the northern shore of Seletar Reservior, the park we were fishing in is the haunt of many anglers, old and young alike. With a size of 3 ha, it boasts a scenic landscape for a leisurely stroll or a jog. It also caters for birdwatchers though I don't think we saw any.

Kevin and Derek , who are both in the profession for serveral months already, show Weisong and I the ropes and gave essentially me a crash course on setting up the rod. Weisong , the more experienced of the two started manhandling his rod. The rod itself is a simple enough affair. What came next is a metal paper clip look-alike and then of course, the bait-



Which comes in a assortment of different shapes and sizes. Not shown here is the elusive, feathery friend of Derek's. I thought it looked a bit like a shuttlecock though.

Live bait was not allowed by the way.


Showing how it's done

And so the waiting started. We cast and reeled back. Hooks got caught into shorts, (read: Weisong tried to murder me) Lines got cut, rods got wasted and at the end of about two hours, the only hint of life in the pond was this.


Not Gillyweed.

Yes. More Seaweed. I think we pulled up an entire forest of it already.

Just when we felt like giving up (and weisong more murderous by the second) Kevin saw a fish jump up a few metres in front of him.


Murder by numbers. ( Weisong is a four A student with F maths)

And so we kept vigil with only the "dommm" sounds of my baits hitting the water and our silent cursing as companion.

I suspected that our fishless day so far had to do with our baits. Examine the following "bait".


Tiger prawns

Is it realistic? Definitely. Everything from the colours down to the prawn's two feelers is hinting at a wonderful snack. What's wrong is that it is not the kind the fishes are accustomed to seeing. I mean, cooked prawns? Fishes don't usually cook their prawns in steamboat. They eat them raw, and wriggling.

But of course, this was before the other guys told me the fishes are also attracted to shiny things. That promtly stopped my train of thought because the other two baits, if you were so kind as to scroll back up, are shiny little buggers.

The other reason would be that we were just plain unlucky.

We left fishless.

But not before I got to know some of the permanent residence there. Meet Pink.



The first thought that went through my mind was that it must be quite tasty because it looks exactly like the sago topping on my honey sago I had for lunch.These thoughts were broken when I slipped and I landed on my elbows squashing one of the clusters. They looked ghastly when oozing pink pus. I hope they're not eggs or something.



Plants like thsese ravaged our poorly covered feet and most of the time I just felt like dunking my poor feet in the water just to soothe them. Note to self : wear shoes next time.

Just before we split up, we had our revenge on the fishes that eluded our capture -by eating the Fillet Ole buddy meals, masterminded by me of course.


"fffffffffish"

Looks like that's two things I'm hooked on.