TASIK TEMENGGOR, PERAK

After a successful outing in Tasik Banding last night, we will continue on exploring the southern part of Belum-Temenggor lake in Day 2. After a good long deep sleep, I felt refresh and so are the guys. We wake up as early as 5.30 to prepare breakfast and simply enjoy the morning coffee. It rained the whole night, a good sign for the morning session as Sebarau or Jungle Perch would be aggressive in hunting small fish along the banks of the lake.

Team 2 head out first while my team started a bit late due to our boatman wake up late from bed haha. Its ok, I kept my mood happy and positive in the morning because to me early morning is the time to keep our emotion in shape so that we can push forward that positive emotion through out the rest of the day. Sg Kedah is our first stop. Team 2 has been fishing there about 30-40 minutes but still no Sebarau in the net. I casts my spoon along the banks and manage to land a baby Sebarau. Things are pretty slow in Sg Kedah, all the floating logs are gone and the water were green in color. We head out to try our luck in Sg Gadong as last night we only manage to land 2 at that spot.

Early morning is the best time to catch big size Sebarau as morning is their usual feeding time 🙂

I think personally, the only place that I really familiar with the underwater structure is in Sg Gadong. Hidden pathway in between the logs provide a good ambush point for Sebarau who digs deep in fallen logs. As we reach the place, we spotted several surface activity indicating there is Sebarau around the spot. As we position our boat in the correct spot, I straight away send my spoon as deep as possible and retrieve all the way to the surface. It was not even more than 5 times I repeat the same process, the boatman notice something followed my spoon but decided to bail in the last moment.

I re-throw the spoon again hoping that fish would still be aiming for my spoon, once it reach bottom, I hard jerk it once and speed retrieve all the way up! All the sudden a glimpse of a massive, massive Sebarau blitz past right in front of our face and grab the spoon! I have no description that I can put in words to describe the intensity of the initial run. Fast! Just massive fish swims so fast and dashed into the underwater structure.

A strong splash of water, accompanied by a string of drag squeezing sound as the fish tries to use the elements to unhooked it self. I kept the line tight, and I believe my Daiko ULS 762 its up for and tried to pull it out from the snag. It stopped moving and I’m not able to pull it out, keeping the line tight at this moment is crucial. I just give an inch or 2 of slack line, knowing that the fish will take it its opportunity run out from the structure. It took the tactic and dashed out again, only this time I was ready to put some pressure to haul in and reel in the fish. The battle was intense! I reel it up, I can feel the lines brushing along the structure. The boat man were screaming not to push it, but after a few seconds it was all clear. No more structure, just the brute strength of the fish that tries to escape. Last time I lost here, this time I finally landed a trophy size Sebarau!!! Wohoo!!

We were just amazed to see the size of the fish, and that fish is a wake up call to the boatman who has been sleepy and that fish put a smile and boost our motivation even more! What a great way to fight a Sebarau, 1.6kg on Daiko ULS 762 2.5-3lb rating rod! Awesome!!!!!

Duwe with his first fish of the day 🙂

Badrul trying to entice a Sebarau that is hammering the shore with a topwater lure, but no luck.

We stayed on for half an hour, Duwe manage to land one Sebarau to his name but that is the last fish we land in this location. We head out to another spot closer to our FOB but still only small Sebarau are willing to hit our spoon.. Are running out of luck here? haha. We stayed on for awhile, exploring underwater water structure. Things are just to quite and we decided to move on to a different location.

Our new location is situated in the banks with a huge log can be seen underwater that crosses the deep water of the lake. We need to retrieve along the huge log, hoping a Sebarau are waiting to ambush our lure. It doesn’t took long before Badrul was the first man to mark his score at this new point. A decent size Sebarau to start his day.

We continue on fishing, along the logs. Using a classic color So’Do spoon the put an extra gold-ish shine underwater proves to be a good strategy as it produce another strong taker. This time power up all the way but the fish escaped after bending my single hook! Duwe was next to receive a strong hitter, this time the battle started well but he drop the rod a bit that cause a slack on the line and the fish to the chance and unhooked itself. Wow this place has a lot of potential. Things went quite after a fish free it self so we head back to rest and have our lunch and rest.

Badrul with his first catch of the day!

That’s it for the morning session, lets head back to base and fill our empty stomach 🙂

Our lunch break was accompanied light rain. If its raining, it is best to wait until the rain stops before venturing out again. We just reheat all our leftover food and take a short nap. It rain and rain until 3.00pm, as the intensit of the rain is reducing and we packed our stuff and head out for our final session of the expedition. It was still raining when we head out, this time we are heading south towards Temenggor Lake.

The distance is quite far from one spot to another thus we spend a lot of our time on boat. We made a few stops along the way but to no avail. We stumble upon team 2 fishing for Sebarau. We were chasing Snakehead from that point onward just to add a variety of species that we can caught. We were stalking several Giant Snakehead but they are not interested with our lure at all. We also stumble upon a Sebarau feeding frenzy, hammering a school of baitfish. Boatman full throttled all the way but we were too late. Sigh..

During that same time, Team 2 had an awesome evening session. They manage to land a number of Sebarau and even better 2 Emperor Snakehead. That is amazing! Emperor Snakehead is a beautiful species and one of the most rare species of the Snakehead family. To land 2 in one day and in one spot was amazing. Probably on it is Female and another Male.

Zahir with his beautiful Kerandang or Emperor Snakehead… Awesome… Hahaha

Bosan with a baby Sebarau, safely released 🙂

While Team 2 having all the fun, we were still jumping from one spot to another until we reach a location called Batu Putih. At lot of surface activity and it looks like a good spot to fish. Badrul casts his Rapala Fatrap Goldfish and after a few crank, something took the lure. The fight were brief though as his Daiwa Morethan was efficient in reelin in the fish. It was a snakehead! Finally our Toman of the day haha.

We fishing along the rocky structure but we saw a fast moving rain cloud that comes from the valley and moving quickly towards us! I rained heavily as it storm pass us. That shortened our fishing time even more and probably enough to visit our last spot. Evening session was not looking great for us today. our final stop of the day take us right back where we finished our morning session. We fish along the log and right at the very end, Duwe finally have his chance to land another massive Sebarau!

Enjoying the sun, final few hours before we head back to reality 🙁

It was like pressing “do you like to continue” button when Duwe get his chance. It was at the same spot on the same spoon. This time he has the time to rethink his mistake and keep the line tight. But yet again, it was not meant to be hehe. Duwe once a gain drop his rod slightly when we receive the initial strike, the fish knew there were slack line and it took the chance and swims free from the fishing hook.

It was like dejavu! Only the timing were different haha. The boatman were pissed because through out the day Duwe loss 3 good fish, but that’s fishing actually. We can’t win all the time, but to loss again under the same circumstances was epic haha. Duwe jump to the shores, take a piss and light up his cigarette to ease off the frustration. Better luck next time bro haha.

Yazid with his huge Sebarau! Sweet 🙂

Boss with his final fish!

2 days of great fishing! A big thank you Yazid, Zahir, Duwe, Badrul and Salihin for being part of this great outing. I know we did not reach our target location but with the fishing result showed to us, still Tasik Banding and Tasik Temenggor has its own ways to shine 🙂

We head back to the jetty at 8.30PM and drove back to KL. We stopped over in Gerik for a nice dinner and that wraps up our Fresh Water outing in Belum-Temenggor lake 🙂