Slow pitch & long fall jigging at Pulau Jarak.

To usher in 2014, we kicked it off to a jiggy good start at Pulau Jarak. A 3 days 2 nights easy going trip with a bunch of like minded enthusiastic anglers. It's been a while since the last time I set foot on the all too familiar GT Chaser with its leathery clean and hardy deck. We kept reminding ourselves that every trip to Pulau Jarak will never be the same and all we can do is to be prepared for almost anything and everything.

This time around, we managed to have some good fun with a variety of feeding frenzies and the occasional awkward deafening silence of no hook ups for hours.

We did however manage to document some interesting catches. Here's what we call slow pitch and also long fall jigging. A technique used in combination of the target species, jigs used, and most importantly to pace ourselves between the intense high pitch jigging.

On the first day jigging at depths of around 60-80meters, to our surprise the only fish that was fond of our sexy jigs were the GTs even around the seabed. GTs after GTs. The fun wore out rather quickly as it wasn't fun trying to haul GTs up from great depths. No other species were around or taking out jigs, we'll just have to put on a brave face, keep calm and keep cranking.

Majorcraft Giant Killing's jig rod fully loaded. This rod is a force to be reckoned with.

Xesta jig deemed too sexy for this GT, worked at moderate speed.

Another on falls for the Xesta, also worked at moderate speeds taken on the fall about 5 meters off the seabed.

Double hook up on Shout jigs. Stay and Width jigs. Worked slow taken on the fall.

The Gees kept hitting, this one went for the new Xesta Agraam, worked fast and was stopped like hitting a freight train.

Up close of the Xesta Agraam speed jig.

On day 2, we went popping around Pulau Jarak shallows and yielded just 1 take. Weird GTs here taking jigs and not poppers or stick baits. For hours we went around and about, no more hook ups. We then headed a little bit further out to deeper waters in search of demersals. Again, nothing was taking our jigs.

Without further delays, we headed to deeper jigging grounds. First stop, a notorious spot called 'Hutan Melintang' as we couldn't believe that not a single fish was interested in our jigs. An infamous spot known for its wide variety of predators namely razor sharp toothed gangsters like sharks, barracudas & spanish macks that just can't help confiscating our jigs and hooks.

As usual, another surprise for a few of us, a mate got the first take and felt like it was a snag. He kept cranking and didn't budge. Another mate got another take, this time it took some drag and immediately after, I was on too! The first fish finally realised it's been hooked up and started to dart about taking drag. And all of a sudden, all 3 of us couldn't feel anything anymore and started retrieving our lines. It felt like it was all tangled up and an occasional tug here and there. We then noticed that there was a school of cobia gangsters, jigs in mouth, swimming up towards us and the boat. The school took notice and immediately scrambled, made a sharp turn parallel to the boat tangling up a few more lines as they go. 2 of us lost our fish and only the first one survived and managed to land the whopper of a cobia of about 30kgs!

On the next drop with a new jig tied on, a quick take and feisty fight ensues.

This small cobia took fancy to my Xesta Agraam jig and was no match for the Majorcraft Giant Killing rod.

After the cobia frenzy drought hit us hard for the next few hours hauling only one grouper and another tiny spanish mack. Before the sun sets, we headed off to anchor at Pulau Sembilan (P9) slowly winding down the day before night falls. A nicely semi sheltered spot famous for its big schools of giant hard tail scads. We quickly switched to our favourite ultra light jigging gear Evergreen Temujin Spider matched with a Shimano Stella 1000FE. We managed to fill up all of our ice boxes and witness the occasional spectacular queen fish aerial fights.

Full loaded Temujin Spider. This is no giant hard tail scad fight.

Feisty little queen fish put up a massive fight taking my IMA Gun 12g for a good run.

And another bigger queenie guaranteeing a good run on the ultra light tackle.

All in all, another signature appeal of Pulau Jarak's unpredictability and yet hauling quite a bit of fish (mostly hard tail scads). We'll be back to keep Pulau Jarak's reputation in check till the next time.

Photos courtesy of Tackle Source.

Anything but big cats!

Once again we're in between offshore trips, last minute cancellations and a sudden development of an itch pushes us find avenues to cure that itch. On such short notice, we regularly hit the pay ponds and this particular pond was rather famous for it's variety of fresh water species and large inhabitants. We've grown accustomed to regularly landing decent cats and sometimes it is just too predictable and repetitive.

What we did this time was to set upon ourselves to target everything but the big cats and put our ultralight gear to the test with a variety of tactics specifically to land new catches. Catches weren't epic but we did manage to surprise ourselves with a nice variety to show off.

Boy vs Fish. Sultan on Evergreen's PropMagic75, gently reeled in to not mess up its fragile mouth using Daiwa Emeraldas & Majorcraft's Go-emotion light spinning rod.

We were literally sweeping systematically across as many water column as we can cover and many more surprises ensues to keep our hopes up for catches anything but big cats.

A surprise take, nicely loaded Temujin 'The Spider'.

A common carp, a rare fatty common carp, a rare catch in this pond!

IMA's Spingulf seems to be racking up species after species here, amazing!

We did as best as we can to target anything but big cats, little did we know that we managed to find ourselves a loop hole interpretation of anything but big cats. These weren't big cats. Cats but not big cats. Passable by our standards.

While the heavy geared boys were hauling up pesky big red tails, This Bassday Nin Sui jigged about the bottom landed this little fella.

Nin Sui in the gob, nothing fancy, just bottom jigging, short to medium intervals.

Another small and skinny cat on the Nin Sui.

When we were about to wrap up our session for the day, I managed to get a hit from something big. I guess there's no escape here in hauling big cats and we have nothing to complain about since we've caught a variety of smaller specimens earlier. I take this as a nice send off from the pond to put a zonker at the end of this ultralight setup of Temujin the 'Spider' paired with a Shimano Stella 1000FE spooled with 6lbs line.

Boy wonders what's he doing fighting with that tiny stick.

Wonder no more, one of the redtail bullies attempting to out run my tackle. Ultralight, but packs a mighty fight!

IMA's Spingulf is the way to go here for all sizes of fish here.

I'd say we did pretty good for ourselves and met most of our expectations to catch 'anything but big cats' with a few creative interpretations of our own mandate. Once again, the ultralight setup of Temujin the 'Spider' + Shimano Stella 1000FE does pack a mighty fight.

Shimano stella 1000FE vs Malabar groupers 1500gm

Here's a new addition to the family that needs no introduction, the Shimano Stella 1000FE. Before this little gem even sees sunlight, I'm stripping it apart to check out its innards, build quality and fitment tuning.

Here's the low down.

1000FE on the operating cloth fully loaded with 6lbs tuffline.

Drag force is super smooth with this one. Will drop in carbontex next for some more tests. Shielded bearing supported spool (upper), no nasty surprises there with aluminum wear.

Tiny line roller supported with 2 bearings, one is with special coating, the other's plain looking with lots of shims in between to keep load forces strictly on the bearings. Oiled, marine grease rubbed down and packed in the roller assembly housing where you get the most water(salt) intrusion here.

The finer details in finishing, usually on other reels the bail trip wire is rested 'naked' on the rotor housing. This little fella comes with a plastic protective sleeve to take on any wear abuse, if there were to have any in this part of the reel.

Another bearing to support the spool (lower). No surprises here. Just needed bearing oil and marine grease rubbed down.

Rotor nut cap and rubber shields exposed, note the bearing that sits in the nut has a brass sleeve for a nice snug fit for the floating shaft. Not really sure why the shaft wasn't designed to fit using standard bearings without additional sleeves like the bigger SW8000 and above Stellas or Twinpowers.

The worse thing about this reel is the 'rear' chrome plastic cap that has an obscure screw through the inside of the body covered with a rubber cork. As the red arrow points, the plastic sleeve used in the body to tunnel the screw through. It's a hassle to remove the screw as you need to use quite a long reach precision screw drivers. Everything else is nicely shim fitted to as little free play as possible. Even the body screws comes with washers, something you don't see on any of the cheaper Shimano reels. All greased up with no tuning needed, yet.

"The Shimano Stella 1000FE pairs perfectly with an ultra light rod such as the Evergreen Temujin "The Spider" says evil friends around me. This combo seems to be 'THE' ultralight gear with powerful backbone and I've seen this combo in action hauling mekong cats the size of a golden retriever. Picture or it didn't happen!

I took the opportunity of a recent public holiday weekday to try this little combo out during the wee hours of the morning at a local paid pond. Upon arrival, there was no one to be seen and even the competitor pond was closed for business due to the public holiday. Luckily, this pond was open and the operator said that they've just reorganized the ponds according to species instead of mixing them up. 1 pond for finger mark snappers, 1 pond for Malabar groupers and the third for barramundis. And only 2 days ago, they've released 500 new fishes into each pond and not much have been fished out of the pond since as they were spooked and needed some time to get used to the new environment.

This calls for sinking subtle action lures to attract some strikes. As I combed through from the beginning of both grouper and snapper ponds, there wasn't a single bite or missed kisses. Slow to fast retrieves, twitches, long pauses, nothing seemed to work. Or perhaps the fish just wasn't where I expected them to be.

When I reached towards the end where so called 'fresh' sea water was being pumped in, that's when things start to get interesting in the grouper pond. I had a couple of missed strikes and botched hook ups when retrieved slowly. I then cast towards the same direction once again but tried a dead slow retrieve knocking on the bottom with extra long pauses. That's when the party started.

First victim using Evergreen's PropMagic 75 worked dead slow with extra long pauses. This little fella produced some feisty spurts of bull runs and took some drag when dialed to about 75-80% tight. This grouper weighs in at about 1.4kg, tasty fella too.

Second victim, 2 earlier botched hook ups but when cast into the same zone with longer pause, the grouper struck again and again so long as it's in front of their kisser. Small fella at about 1.3kg, released.

Third victim, or 4th, earlier bugger escaped when I was trying to land the bugger. IMA trip 66 worked super slow and occasionally letting it slalom drop down to the strike zone. This grouper tipped 1.8kg on the scales, released to fight another day.

5th or 6th, several misses earlier, but an extended pause registered nothing until I start to reel it back in to realize that the lure was already in the mouth swimming towards me. DUO Spinbait 80 worked as 'spybait' crawling the bottom. This little grouper almost straightened the split ring for the hook. Feisty fella at 1.4kg, released.

Another willing customer entertaining my DUO Spinbait 80 crawling the bottom near the grouper's congress party. Another fella at about 1.6kg, solid and tasty when steamed with soy sauce.

The groupers were mostly congregated around a small area towards the end of the pond and I had a blast hauling these little bulls using this ultralight ultra-powerful combo with little hassle. Now I understand why this is 'THE' ultralight gear that is a must have for our application here.

Scores? Shimano Stella 1000FE 'Infinity', Malabar groupers 1500gm 'Tasty'.