Deep Sea Fishing!

I've not been able to sit in front of the computer because I'm still rocking and giddy from the overnight deep-sea fishing trip we took last weekend.


Setting out, with KK's skyline behind. Wey still in school uniform.

We were so lucky to meet Bernard who organized a fishing trip when he heard how Yi loved to fish. Bernard has a 70 feet boat so last Saturday at 2 pm, we left KK on a 3-hour journey to our destination 330 degrees northwest of Sabah. We've done night fishing, day-night fishing about an hour off KK but never deep-sea fishing overnight.

We arrived in the middle of the ocean, no land to be seen, at 5 pm. The sea was choppy but bearable. Wedge, with some help from Bernard, drew in the first catch (on our side of the boat), a little red grouper. Almost at the same time, Yi got a big pisangpisang. There's something about that girl--she always gets the first and the most fish whenever we go fishing. We aren't frequent fisher people so we only used hooks and lines, and we found it really hard to feel the bites because we were casting from 60 to 150 feet deep.





Around 8 pm, I shoved a mouthful of rice and fried fish into my mouth and immediately felt nauseous (lesson: never eat oily food or, better still, don't eat at all). Took a sea-sick pill and went straight to my bunk. The bunk was swaying left and right. The sea got rougher through the night, with rolling waves. I imagined myself in a large hammock. After a while, it didn't work because I wanted to get off the hammock. I thought of my friend KLK, who gets giddy even when I drive. To town. I thought: why did I come on this trip?? I thought of you all, safely on land, eating and drinking happily and I wished I was home watching that Prison Break Second Season, Part 2 VCD I had bought in Shenzhen. Oh, misery!


Expression of a person who's about to throw up. Only Hub and Wey did not get very sick.

Around mid-night, I got up because I couldn't sleep. Hub was still fishing, alongwith the two Filipino helpers. (It's great with them around. They help us hook the bait on, take the fish off, untangle the line...we just have to cast the line and wait!) I dropped a line in for the first time and within 5 min, caught a reasonably big 'fire dot' which is also called 'Moses Perch'. Or is it bream? Then within 10 min, a small barracuda! Hub also started hauling fishes in. It's interesting to know that at different times, you get different types of fish. We caught groupers, breams and perches in the afternoon, squid, barracuda and king mackeral (tenggiri) at night and white fish (in 150 feet waters) in the morning.


One of the Filipinos hauled in a huge king mackeral of about 6 kg! Several others also caught these giants. I wondered if we could be so lucky too (we were not). Suddenly I felt sick and threw up overboard...that was the end of my fishing. From then on, I just curled up in the bunk waiting for daylight. Daylight came, a glorious sunrise, but I was so weak and nauseous because the sea had gotten rougher and I wished I was home. Rolling waves are much harder to bear than choppy waves. And the sea looked black even in the day. Probably because we were now in very deep waters. Even Yi, who puked 3 times, gave up fishing because it takes quite a while to draw up your line when you cast it 150 feet deep!


L to R: a special red snapper, 'silver thread', grouper, pisangpisang, baby barracuda, whitefish, trevally and 'fire dot', a kind of bream. Or is it perch?
That's part of our catch (except for the snapper). All-in we looted about one bucketful of fish, most of them caught by Yi. The other 10 guys? Their cooler boxes were full!

This little guy is called 'pingpong racket' because he's so round. Delicious steamed and sashimied, so do look out for him!



We survived the seasickness, the sun, the toilet and each others' stink (because we didn't shower or brush our teeth). I looked as sick as I felt.

Now that I've done it, I know I will NEVER EVER go deep-sea fishing again. NO WAY.