Snakehead Fishing with the Wellingtons

The last visit to the ex-mining town of Batang Berjuntai was last February, thats 8 months ago, for me.

There are endless lakes, ponds and rivers to fish at here but they are also heavily fished. As they’ve been for decades. That’s OK really except for the fact that most fish, Haruan or Toman, big or small are mostly bagged and so getting fish can be a challenge especially decent sized ones.

Video above shows two striped snakehead or haruan (C.Striata) caught with the ever effective Mazzy Frog lure. Too bad I lost that lure a bit later at the exact same spot.

The fish that attracts me back to this place has to be the Toman or Giant Snakehead. The biggest, meanest of the snakeheads. And where we find them in numbers, they are very lock-jawed. There’s this pond which we might as well name the University. The Toman that swims its waters have become smart to our ways and baits. Getting them to take our offerings is a huge challenge but a rewarding one when you succeed in fooling them to take our lure.

We made a quick stop at some Haruan (Striped Snakehead) spots. Only smaller fish were caught here before we moved to a Toman pond where one small Toman took my newly acquired Ecogear lure. The recent dry spell did not help. Toman fishing is usually better during periods where its been raining frequently.

The Ecogear lure has a very tight wriggling action and rattles reminiscent of the Rattlin’ Rapala which is also one of my go-to lures. The finishing and built quality of the Ecogear lure is superb with fine attention to detail.

Eye-sore
This pond is also very fishable from shore. Sadly, the shores are also littered with garbage left behind by anglers. One would assume anglers as being nature-loving people and yet they make a mess of the place they fish making it a real eye-sore. I’m sure they also know that plastic bags and bottles and such are non-biodegrable? Who do they expect to clean up after them? Such a pathetic bunch.

Holy Crap! It’s no bullshit that these mushrooms mushrooming from this piece of shit will get you high!

Will launch the boat and fish from the many ponds that are heavily fringed by water plants on out next visit. These ponds are much harder to fish and should have less spookier fish and hopefully less polluted.

What about the Wellingtons? Some buddies wore Wellington boots for the first time and they come very handy (errrr… or should that be footy?) on mushy wet ground. And some (read pseudo) Wellington boots are very cheap at less than USD3 a pair! Too bad I can’t find a pair to fit big ol’ big-foot me.