Fishing @ Batu Gajah...

The huge lake we fished

On an early Saturday morning, my cousin (Stan Lee) MSN me asking whether we're doing any fishing since I'm back to Ipoh? I was thinking why not since it's a Saturday and none of my relatives are back for the CNY celebration and it has been awhile since my rod has seen any action....I think the last was early 2008. Wow! Almost a year already....

Stan Lee came over to pick me up around 10am and we went to a coffeeshop nearby my house at Canning Garden to have breakfast. I was shocked to see the coffeeshop packed! Then it came to me...long holidays for the Chinese New Year break... Managed to get a seat after a minute of waiting...yea...considered lucky...We had wan tan mee and egg custards! Yummy!

Then we're off...it took us nearly 40 minutes to reach our destination...and for Ipoh standard... it's really far away. Well it's Batu Gajah after all, a town of its own and nearest landmark I can recall is Clearwater Sanctuary. We had to pass through lots of rubber and oil palm plantation estates and I was impressed with the road pavements that has been done here as it's all brand new FREEWAY quality roads.

I was amazed with the number of ponds you can see going through the FREEWAY and when we arrived, the lake we're supposed to fish is just beside the FREEWAY. Wow...talk about convenience for casual fishing. About 50 metres odd from the lake is the Batu Gajah train station and seriously I didn't even know that there is any train station at Batu Gajah at all. We quickly alighted and prepare our equipments for fishing.

Stan Lee with his Tilapia

Stan Lee had 3 standard size rods and with another 12 feet extendable rod for reaching hard to get places. Talk about "kiasu"...hahahhaa...while i had 2 standard size rods. Anyways I also do believe with a wild lake such as this, the more rods, the better chances. By the way, the lake is quite clear with lots of storks as well. Shows that is a good fishing ground especially since these birds likes fish for food. We were only using earthworms as baits and we rigged 3 with float while another 2 for bottom fishing.

Stan Lee even used a stick and converted it to a fishing pole. Ancient fishing style.....before fishing rods was invented and he caught lots of small fishes ranging from 3 inches to palm sized. Not sure what fishes they were with yellowish body with black stripes and a black dot near its tail. Looks like from the chiclid family type of fish which is a family for our local tilapias. After about an hour 1 of Stan Lee's float has a nibble and he quickly strike...quite a fight there with light tackle....got it up and to our surprise a beautiful 1 foot Tilapia....not bad for a wild pond thats beside the FREEWAY as usually these kind of places would be overfished.

Yours truly with a Haruan/Snakehead

Another 30 minutes or so, my bottom fishing tackle got a strong jerk and luckily my rod did not went into the lake....would be a nightmare then....I quickly rushed over and had a quick strike and felt nothing...probably the hook didn't managed to latch itself? As I reel in I felt there was some resistance...more of like pulling in water feeds feeling. Hope begins to arise and then when it was up, I was happy to see a 1.5 foot Haruan/Snakehead. It's been awhile since I caught any fish at these wild places and such a good sized fish is even rare.

After my fish there were no more actions but Stan Lee still manages to catch those weird small sized fishes. We left around 4.15pm as it's getting too hot ( I actually got sun burnt on my neck, face and hands! ) and also very hungry as we did not pack lunch. On the way back, Stan Lee decided to use the highway from Simpang Pulai to Ipoh and to our surprised we were caught in a massive jam. We were stuck all the way 2 km from the Ipoh toll :(

All in all, was a wonderful trip and thanks to Stan Lee....I renew my faith in fishing again.