Sukida Resort is a picturesque place to wet a line. Located along Jalan Sg Lalang in the once sleepy town called Semenyih – located in Selangor, Malaysia (Google map at end of article), it has some of the Malaysian kampung (village) feel to it.
Only 3 bucks to fish?!
Sukida encourages catch and release, and stocks many freshwater fish. It is also one of the cheapest place to fish, costing only MYR10 or about 3 US dollar to fish from dawn to late evening. Yes, 3 dollars! Curiously, the fee have not increased since they started operations sometime around 2006.
It is made out of a couple of ponds though most fishing are done on the main, and biggest pond. The most popular target species here are the pacu (Piaractus brachyomus), pronounced as pa’ku, and patin (Pangasius pangasius). The patin is a native species and is commonly called the pla sa wai in Thailand. The beauty of Sukida is there are still many big ones here to keep many regular anglers coming back for more.
Some long time buddies have recently been visiting this place and the photos of huge pacu caught by Gary piqued my interest.
Fly-fishing for pacu
So when a long weekend came up we arranged a trip there and I wanted to catch something big by fly fishing. I’m happy to have caught a decent pacu using a nymph and on 10lb tippet.
Why 10lb? Because I was fishing a terrestrial fly just before I tied on the nymph and so I got a little lazy putting on a heavier tippett. Lucky for me this particular fish had the nymph hooked right at the corner of its jaw and no bite-off.
Most of my pacu are caught on nymphs either during the drop or slow figure-eight retrieve. The other flies I’ve had success with are the (dark coloured) woolly bugger and shrimp patterns which are slow stripped on the bottom. The patin fish can also be caught using the aforementioned methods (much less common).
Hard fighters
The fighting characteristics of the pacu – nicknamed the freshwater GT by some – is a finger burning sizzling run when hooked. This will be followed by many more runs while zipping to the left and right. If there is cover nearby, it will make a run for it. You will also know you have a pacu at the end of your line by the twitching rod tip. Again, reminiscent of a GT!
The patin on the other hand will give steady, less sizzling but powerful long runs. Your rod tip will bop up and down during the patin’s run.
On this day of fishing we lost two patins during landing. One was barely hooked and it pulled off when I had my hand on the leader and another snapped the leader when Poh grabbed it (Note to self: Bring landing net!).
Sadly though, the facilities and surrounding at Sukida is a pale shadow of its glory days. Sukida was THE place to fish back when they opened, even attracting anglers from Singapore who drove all the way here for some fishing. The only saving grace is perhaps the fishing can still be good with high probability of landing some big pacu and patin.
