Toman and Haruan Fishing at Batang Berjuntai

Thursday, 2nd October 2008

This is quite an old post that I found among the archive and decided to give it some daylight again.

The day was hot that’s for sure. The foursome including Yap, Richard and Wai Meng left for the former tin mining town of Batang Berjuntai at 6 a.m. The drive there was pleasant with few vehicles on the road. We reached our destination 45 minutes later and proceeded to have a small-town-noodle-breakfast. Nice and cheap. There were others in the shop that look set for fishing, with car topper and some were going hunting, with dogs in the truck.

Promising looking

Our target fish was the infamous local snakeheads; Toman or Giant Snakehead and Haruan or Striped Snakehead.

We must have fished 10 ponds big and small in that one morning alone. Some if not most of these ponds looked great.

Deep water in the middle

The fishing was not easy as all the ponds were fringed by at least 15 ft with weeds or water hyacinths, before open waters. Weedless was the only way to go. Some of us were ill-equipped for this trip armed with hard body lures and swim bait. Only certain spots were crank baits, poppers and deep-divers used but alas with limited success.

Lots of vegetation border the banks

At 9:50 a.m. we heard a load “Oooi!!” and splash from across the pond where Hubert just started casting his frog into. His account was “First cast and WHAM! out of nowhere a Toman struck my bait on the surface”.

After some line-spitting and drag-spinning through the weeds a decent sized Toman of 3kg was landed.

A satisfied looking customer
Father and son team of Richard & Ming in action
Ahhhh.... food. Claypot salted-fish with pork and dried chillies. Yum! What's a fishing trip without good food?
Barang Berjuntai
Quintessential small town that is almost but forgotten

All in all it was a decent trip fishing new spots, new ponds “recced” and tested with what worked and what may work in the future. There were a lot of follow from many fish but they were easily spooked.

4 fish were landed in the 5 hours of fishing various spots. 3 Haruan and 1 Toman. All released.

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