Banana is Good?

Was downed with flu.

Despite feeling unwell, went Spot Banana this morning.
Missed the golden first light due to some unexpected delays...

Using a smaller lure to target those temensis, I set my drag looser than usual.

This is because if heavier/stronger trebles were used on such smaller lures, it will severely hinder or totally eliminate it's swimming action as well as buoyancy.

After some time of casting without any results, I went deeper into the vegetation and resume casting at the exact same spot where I caught a monitor lizard some time back.

Suddenly, I felt a violent take and set my hook immediately.

At one point, I almost lost the fish as it pulled easily under my light drag setting.
It dashed for cover on my far right.

When I lost sight of the fish which is blocked by vegetation on my right, I kept the line tight without retrieving for fear of breaking my main line due to abrasion from the branches.

Luckily, the toman got pissed by the constant tension and struggled itself out of the bush.

I immediately thumbed my spool hard and steered the fish away from those snags.

Can't worry about straightening those thin treble hooks at that time.
It's a do or die situation.

The toman was subdued after many wild dashes.

67cm Giant Snakehead aka Toman

Lure: Duel Hardcore Lipless Minnow 120F

Leech!
I absolutely hate these suckers!

Almost 8lbs

Healthy coloration and perfect undamaged fins

Going back to where it rightfully belongs

After releasing the toman, spent abit of time replacing the bent trebles on the lure.

Resumed casting and got myself two other temensis:

Duel Hardcore Lipless Minnow 120F

Ima Sasuke 140F

Went home after the short but fruitful session...


Decided to watermark my photos after some friends discovered my photos being hijacked by someone else in a closed facebook group of Malaysian anglers.
Even though my blog is currently only known to a handful, it is not locked.

I have absolutely no idea where that thief got my photos from.
Facebook? Whatsapp? Line? Forum?

That fella cropped or mosaic away my rod/reel and claimed those snakeheads as his own catches.

Became mute and disappeared into thin air after my friends exposed his shameful act.
Friends whom I have never even met before, almost all of them residing in Malaysia.

Thanks guys!




Flu got worse...

Dentistry: Profession for the Sadists

There are professions in the world that puts one in a position to inflict immense pain upon others without getting themselves judged:

1) Tattoo Artist

2) Surgeon

3) Prison Rotan Executor

4) Death-Row Executioner 

5) Thai Masseuse

6) Foot Reflexologist 

7) Girlfriend

8) Wife

9) Mother-in-Law

*List is not comprehensive nor exhaustive.

BUT!

The most sadistic of all should be awarded to dentists.

They're the ones who are really twisted in the mind...

Charging an exorbitant amount of money for a sadistic job which requires less than an hour to complete.

For my entire life, I've always been avoiding these devils unless really necessary.

If you guys can recall, back in our primary school days, there's always an in-house dentist who will summon those poor kids randomly for a torture session in their human-experimental labs in school.

Still remembered I got the ticket twice and on each time, I will hide myself in the toilet after being called.

Strangely, on both occasions, no manhunt was initiated and I'm able to return to class after a short while of hiding where everyone thought that I had actually went.

Maybe the dentist had assumed that I was not in school that day and didn't pursue further due to the large amount of lab rats available in Keng Seng Primary School. I don't know?

Next came Outram...

No such torture chambers in secondary schools.

I was wrong...

It actually turned mobile!

There's those buses with deceivingly cute cartoon tooth livery which travels to various secondary schools one at a time with devils disguised like angels in white uniforms as it's minions.

They will park somewhere in a corner, make themselves comfortable and start their sick summoning process all over again.

Those evil beings...

Never letting me go even after I entered my teens...

Of the 4 years in Outram, I was called up once.

When the previous victim turned up at my classroom announcing my name, strangely, I was not afraid.

Didn't feel any slightest hint of fear at all even though everyone was looking at me.

I can actually sense sympathy in those eyes.

In fact, I calmly wore my shoes, walked out of the classroom, passed the devil's bus in the middle of the carpark, through the school's main gate, walked to the bus stop with a Marlboro between my fingers and took a bus ride home.

Didn't went to school for the next 2 days.

When I returned, the bus had already went for it's next destination.

A place where fresh meats are waiting to be slaughtered...

After I entered the workforce, there was once where my gums started bleeding.

It bled for more than a month worsening with each passing day.

I could taste blood all the time, felt stinging pain every second while I'm awake.

Blood was literally oozing out of my swollen dark red gums every single second.

There was once when I was talking to my now ex-boss when blood trickled down my chin unknowingly.

He made an urgent appointment with his regular dentist at Jalan Sultan and shooed me into the devil's lair.

What came next can be described as the most nightmarish event of my life...

The dentist explained that I got a very bad gum infection due to excessive calculus buildup.

She needs to perform a sadistic procedure on me known as 'Tooth Scaling'.

No choice...

For the next agonizing hour, the she-devil proceeded to insert numerous foreign objects into my mouth forcing me to watch the entire process while she dug, scrapped, chiseled at my teeth's roots rubbing against my painful gums inducing more blood. How sick is that?

I swore that she was smiling underneath that mask of hers, savouring every moment of my torture...

After for what seemed to be an eternity, the torture ended and the she-devil told me that she could not proceed with the second stage due to my excessive bleeding.

She's having a hard time toying with my teeth with my blood getting in the way, blocking her vision.

Even her suction apparatus was no match for my obscene amount of blood.   lol

She gave me a later date to come back for the second stage of polishing.

I left the clinic without turning back and threw away the appointment card into the bin.

######################################

This morning, I woke up feeling pain from my wisdom tooth located deep inside my lower right jaw.

In the past, it had given me some discomfort before but often mild which went away after a few days.

This time however, I knew that it's different...

The pain was unbearable and it got worse after I reached my workplace.

Giving me headaches as well.

I'm unable to swallow any of my saliva due to my swollen gum and throat.

Even my handsome face was swelling up.

Dragged myself to a dentist nearby where he proceeded to poke at my swollen gum around my wisdom tooth's area.

Pressing forcefully at different spots, he will ask: 'Here pain or not?'

KNN... OF COURSE FUCKING PAIN LAR!!! 

THAT'S PRECISELY THE AREA WHICH IS BLOODY SWOLLEN RIGHT?! 

YOU FUCKING BLIND AR!

Of course, I didn't said the above words for fear of incurring the devil's wrath...

He might take revenge later...

So angry...

Took X-ray, devil proposed to surgically extract the affected wisdom tooth and extract another one located directly located just above it to totally eradicate the problem permanently.

But there's a catch...

My gums were already infected and swollen.

If I were to proceed with the surgery, the recovering process is going to take longer and more uncomfortable than usual.

Also, there's a risk of worsening the infection after surgery.

Told him that I needed some time to seriously think about this life or death situation...

Walked out the clinic, took out my Marlboro and called Ling.

In short, Ling wants me to submit myself to the devil...

Hung up, finish my ciggy, lit another one, finished it as well, went back in and bravely told the dentist to go ahead and murder me.

Go ahead and proceed ONLY with the one affected tooth.

1 hour non-stop. 

I was masked this time, mercifully...

Spared the sight of myself being mutilated...

He tugged and pulled at my tooth after sawing it into sections.

With every successful tug, I could feel the 'Craaccckkk' vibrating through my jaws.

Stitched up the wound and it's over...

Went home, spat out the bloody cotton, showered, brushed my poor dismembered tooth and left it to dry.

Noticed that abit of flesh is still attached to it...

Yummy......

Went to sleep hugging Boy.

Woke up hours later and proceeded to reconstruct what's left of my poor tooth:

Pretty good job restoring it even though some parts are missing. I would say.

Medical leave of 8 days given along with a bill of almost a thousand dollars...

Best thing is... 

There's still 3 wisdom tooth waiting...

I'll rather kill myself next time...

A Very Angry Mozzy

Went Mozzy at first light.
Trekked in while it's still dark.

It got angry after a short while.
Very angry...

It progressed into a thunderstorm with lightning in just a matter of minutes.

Rain was heavy, wind was strong, lightning aplenty.

Tall grasses were blown flattened by the strong wind.

Rain was traveling almost in a horizontal manner as well.

Kept casting.

As usual, no fish in the rain......

7/8 September Weekend Fishing

Went a yet-to-be introduced spot on Saturday's first light.

Spot shall be christened as GOLDIE from now on.

Only 1 Cichla Temensis landed with my topwater IMA Popkey.

A few misses on my minnows.

Line snapped 5 times while I was there! 

Everytime it snapped, I had to tie on a large lure (Scouter) and snag the lost floating lure back.

Everytime it snapped, I had to redo the FG Knot which takes about 10 minutes each time.

Anyway, the FG is also known as Fucking Good knot which explains the tedious effort to tie...

Those tiny recoil guides on my NRX simply doesn't accept other knots which are thicker.

Stupid line going to where it should belong.

Trashed the entire spool of relatively new Berkley's Whiplash Crystal into the bin when I got home.

Cleaned my reel and spooled on fresh braided line.

Guess what?

Sufix 832 regained the top spot of my list.  lol

I shall not be easily tempted by those cheaper lines again.

Sometimes, one really has to believe that good things does not come cheap...

##########################################

Had a very late night on Saturday and was planning to skip fishing on Sunday morning.

But when I woke up at 5am naturally without the assistance of alarm clock, it's pretty hard to fall back to sleep again with thoughts of fishing swirling around in my mind.

Showered, changed and left home.

Was drizzling when I was walking to the carpark.

While on my way there, the rain got heavier...

Hoping that the merciless rain will stop soon, I started to have second thoughts about pushing on...

When I reached, the rain slowed back to a drizzle but the sky remains a threatening crimson.

Heck, since I'm already here, might as well go in and leave the rest to nature.

Walked in at a leisure pace, took some photos of the menacing sky:

Mud everywhere, water everywhere.

Started casting and after a while, the rain and wind picked up.

Never had any luck fishing in the rain before.
To begin with, didn't expect much from the moment I walked out my main door.

True enough, all I got was this in the rather heavy rain:

Trekked back out in the heavy rain. 

Drove slowly back home.

On a side note, modification to my SV Spool worked flawlessly.

Casting the light Popkey into the far distant is a breeze now. 

SV Spool: Fault and Remedy

The new SV shallow spool by Daiwa comes stock with 2 reels, namely the Steez and T3 SV.

I'm lucky enough to get my hands on a piece from the first production batch for my Ryoga 1016H.

After some time of usage, a design fault surfaced which greatly reduced my casting distance as well as consistency.

Upon closer inspection, I discovered where the fault lies.



It is caused by 2 factors:

1) Excessive tolerence space between the main spool shaft and the rotor's guide.

2) Plastic rotor's guide not rigid enough.


I will not go into details of how Daiwa's magnetic brake works. There's more than enough information on this topic if anyone cares to do an online search. Will only give a brief idea of how it works below:

In short, the spool's induction rotor is suppose to extend into the magnets at the very first moment a cast is made due to the centrifugal force generated.

This is to prevent backlashes resulting from the rod's loading action when casting: Initial burst of force when releasing thumb on a low brake setting will almost guarantee backlashes.

The design fault that I discovered had actually crippled the spool's performance.

What happens is that when a forceful loaded cast is made, the induction rotor naturally extends outward. No problem here.

Thing is, it will sometimes get stuck at it's outward position not being able to retract back.

This is caused by the 'foot' of the induction rotor cap digging into the freeplay space between the guide and main spool shaft resulting in a stuck rotor.

Users who face this problem will know what I'm talking about here.

Noobs might not even be able to detect anything wrong with their SV spools.

Ignorance is blissful indeed...



My remedy is simple yet effective.

What I did was to fill up the said excessive space using a tiny piece of polycarbonate sheet.


And of course, you can send the spool back to Daiwa and try to explain to them the design fault.
Be prepared for a loooooooong wait though.

That is, if they will even admit their flawed R&D and remedy it for you at all...

If they do this, they will have to recall all SV1000 spools on this planet and replace them with new improved ones, not to mention the money and reputation at stake here.


Do not be put down by this minor fault though.
The SV1000 spool is easily the best performing spool upgrade option by Daiwa till date.

For those who trusts their own hands, here's a pictorial walkthrough to guide you along:

First is to remove the induction rotor by extracting the 'C' clip which holds everything together. 

What you will get is the 'C' clip itself, 2 identical washers, a soft strength spring and the induction rotor.

Do not lose any of the small parts, especially when removing the 'C' clip.

See the arrowed gap? 
It's the main culprit of all this hassle.
The excessive tolerance freeplay gap will trap the rotor's footing rendering it stuck in activation position.

This photo shows the rotor's guide.
Turn the spool over to the other side, use a pen's tip and push the 2 'black dots' to remove the guide.
The 'black dots' are actually the guide's footing.

This is how the guide looks like up close.

I fashioned the 'gap filler' from a braided line's packaging which is made from polycarbonate sheet.
In case anyone wants to know, it came from Sufix 832's packaging.

Squeeze a droplet of super glue onto something and apply a coat on the insides of the guide by using a toothpick.
DO NOT apply super glue to the guide directly.
It's way too much!

Fit the polycarbonate piece into the guide and allow plenty of time to let the glue set.
Next, slowly shave away the excessive polycarbonate piece with a very sharp crafting knife.

Slowly shave it off bit by bit instead of cutting off the whole chunk.

After it's shaved to the same dimension as the guide, slot it back into the spool shaft along with everything else. 
Again, take care not to lose anything in the process.
Be extra careful with the 'C' clip: it is difficult to put it back in as taking it out due to it's small size.

Problem easily solved!

Even with a bugging girlfriend at my side...   lol

Sunday's Banana

Went to Mozzy early in the morning and encountered an SAF convoy:

Aborted Mozzy and went to Banana instead.

Missed the first light golden timing...

Met Derek and his friend by chance while walking in.

That guy sure likes that spot...

Upon arrival, glad to see that the water was running.

First few casts landed me these:

Both by my newly acquired Duo Tide Minnow in dark color.

After awhile, water stopped and action slowed...

Left for home...

Speaking of which, I had replaced almost all my minnows and topwaters recently:

That's it for this month!

No more spending money on fishing stuff again!

I'll try......