Wildgeeks goes Eel Fishing

Been a while since I blog in wildgeeks, well, the geeks are not just about mountain biking, but basically, an adventure club I would call it. So couple of weeks back, we decided to follow my dad to go eel fishing since we have not done it before.

Jack, KC and myself followed my dad to Sekinchan to search for eels in the paddy fields. Not known to many and I got reminded about this when I visit the paddy museum in Kedah that paddy fields is actually a habitat to various kind of fishes, birds and also eels in this case.

The local eels or belut in Malay basically lives in the paddy fields especially on the drain like water irrigation along the fields. The best time to fish for them during harvesting season at the fields where the water level is lowered.

The trick is simple, walk along these water irrigation drains, then look for hole in the mud under the swallow water and most likely there's an eel in it. These eels are trapped and with low water, they have less food and therefore are hungry and easy catch in someway. We were actually 1-2 weeks late for the season as most fields have started to seed or some are spraying pesticides, therefore it was quite difficult for us to find dry drains to fish.

Anyhow, we got some sotong and squid for the task, just put them on the hook (we are just using a bamboo stick with a string tied with a fishing hook which the end have been flatten) and aim the hook into the hole. Move it around the hole and soon you will see a snake like head coming out to check it out. Its not as easy we thought, the first few bites, the eel managed to get away with our bait!!!

But finally I caught one, that's when KC got a bit soar, hehehe... then I caught a second one... you can imagine him complaining... hahahaha... but soon KC got his own eel, now you imagine Jack's face... hahahaha... determined, Jack kept on searching and trying... sadly, it's really not his day or maybe like KC said, no skill... muhahaha!

Anyhow, its pretty excited, especially when you can see the eel's head and trying to put the bait next to it and getting ready to pull, but if you pull too hard, the eel will let go or the hook will run through the eel's mouth (its very soft) and it will get away. So we hard to pull just at the right time. According to my dad's friends whom have done it many times, if we go at the right season, every drop of the bait you get an eel and could get buckets of them in a day!

We didn't catch that many that day but it was really a fun experience for me, will probably do it again say in May-June during the next harvest season. Jack, stop searching with the binocular, your search continues in May and please, catch something this time... hahahaha :P

More eel fishing pix here http://picasaweb.google.com/kctang/20080128EelFishing