Fishing Chilli

2007-10-28T03:28:00.000-07:00

It has been ages since I last went fishing and actually caught something that can be brought home for dinner.
Today, I decided to go out from KK town area and go to a place I know, a nice secluded place where at least 7 out of the last 10 trips allowed me to bring home one or two table size fish and normally earned me an approving look from my better half.

Make that 8 out of 11 trips now. Nothing really to shout about in term of the size of the fish but it was fun to catch them. I arrived there about 2.30pm and the tide is about 1 meter and slowly rising, the red line on the chart is the time I fished.

The first fish I caught is a family of the trevally. The local call them ikan cermin (mirror fish) basically because of the very reflective surface of the fish. I thought the fish is called a threadfin trevally because of the long thin threadlike fin when they are small.

The one I caught is still smallish I suppose but it is a nice dish just for two people. The thing about my place is they totally do not have size limit. Typically I release any fish smaller than 1 hand, unless gut hooked then it's pointless to release because they probably die. Self-imposed limit influenced by watching Rex Hunt fishing series. Caught and release 3 small groupers and one emperor fish slightly smaller than a hand (longish mouth with reddish fins/tail). It was a nice run for a small fish. Hit the live prawn bait mid water and straight away run with the line. I used a 20 lb flourocarbon leader and a 10lb line. A bit overkill but that was my rig when I last use them in Perth so hmm didnt bother changing them.

The other fish that I caught is just before I was about to go back, using my last bait. At first I thought it was another grouper just a bit bigger as it immediately try to run towards the corals but then it turn out to be a black color snapper. Well actually I am not sure if that is the actual name of the fish but it is black and looks like a snapper hence black color snapper, maybe I should call it thicked lip black snapper. I caught it few times before, mangrove area and they have very thick and soft lips, no teeth at all a little like bream. Very yummy sweet flesh as well.

Hmmm here is a picture of the two fishes next to each other, as you can see the trevally is slightly bigger. Tonight we will eat the snapper first. The trevally, hmmm lots of people say is nice but I don't really fancy it much. The flesh is a bit tasteless to me, the black snapper is a lot nicer and sweeter. Probably we just don't know how to cook it, we just normally steam the fish and put ginger and soy sauce.

Okay as you can see, our steamed fish does not really look very appetizing, it does not have the typically restaurant look with nicely placed herbs dressing BUT it does taste good, the fish itself being fresh (still alive when i reached home) and the taste of it is excellent enough to compensate for our lack of skills in cooking :)

The skin especially has a very smooth taste to it, it taste a little like steamed coral trout skin but sweeter and smoother. The flesh is sweeeeeet, I just love this yummy fish.. just look at the fat and thick sweet lips, mmmmmm..

2007-04-13T01:03:00.000-07:00

Hmmm caught myself a bream or is it a Tarwine??!!! while on vacation in Perth.

Shown below are some of the fishes that I caught using prawn as bait.

All the fishes except the one on the left were released after the pictures were taken including the blowfish.

2006-12-31T04:28:00.000-08:00

Went fishing again with brother nico, time was 3pm till about 7pm at Angler's delight. A jetty somewhere near Kinarut there just before Outward Bound. That's me on the right with one of the fish. The current was moving pretty fast on that day but saw few guys there got some decent size fish, trevally & mangrove jack. One even claimed that he lost 2 MJ when the line snapped just below the jetty. From the description he was telling us and also the size he indicated with his hand which almost twice the span from one end of my tummy to another might have been a typical fisherman's tale of the fish that got away :)

The picture on the right is two things that I like a lot, durian and fish. This fish is called Kitang which is one of my favourite fish to catch for the fact that they are pretty fiesty little fellow.

They fight pretty well for their size especially when you use very light tackle. Well what else can you catch from the shore which give you a decent fix to your fishing addiction. If the fish cant get bigger, use lighter tackle.

Hmmm time to go out for dinner, it's 8.27 pm now and need to go have something before going out with friends for new year thingy.

The graph at the bottom is the tide at the time we went fishing.

2006-12-29T21:20:00.000-08:00

Hmmm 30th December 2006, almost the end of 2006.

Went fishing at Nexus Lagoon jetty with my brother Nico and Sissy Jess from 8am till about lunch time.

Shown below is the picture of my nephew Eli, Sissy Jess and Mum.

Started promising with my sissy line got pulled by something which run straight into the coral below the jetty. It is probably one of those pesky smallish grouper the size of your palm.

They do look beautiful but they are too small to keep.

Anyway, shown on the left is our catch of the day. We got so engrossed with catching the fishes that we forgot to take picture at the jetty when we caught the fish.

We use two set of rig to catch the fish locally known as Laimang or Belais I think. One is with a big hook with a large whole live prawn which is basically there to keep those fishes around while we use another two line with tiny hooks probably about size 10 to catch the fishes.

Quite a few managed to break the line / hooks especially the bigger speciments. Shown below is the slightly bigger ones but not as big as the ones that got away.

Anyway the location is okay to fish but will cost about RM 10 per person to enter. It belongs to the Nexus Karambunai Hotel & Resort.

The problem about the area is it does not have any shade. Another source of irritant is of course being a jetty to cater for tourist to go on and off boats to ferry them for a river cruise and other touristy thingy you have to from time to time entertain their curiousity and questions and answers.

Expect to get some cheers and wows and ohhh and ahhhh if you happened to catch any fish. Well at least it's only like few minutes of interruptions every other hour so it's okay i suppose.

Shown below is the tide during that time.

2006-11-12T17:08:00.000-08:00

Bought a few fishing stuff recently from Cabelas.

Daiwa Exceller 3300
Exceler® Features:
HardBodyz™ computer die cast aluminum alloy body
DigiGear™ digital gear design
Seven bearing system including CRBB corrosion resistant bearings at key locations
Machined aluminum ABS spool
Machined aluminum handle with Soft Touch knob

I already owned a Daiwa Laguna and I am pretty happy with the smooth casting and the distance that I got from it. I decided to buy the Exceller because my Laguna is somewhat on the large size, Laguna 5000. I bought it last time to try on surf fishing. Got myself a 10 foot fishing rod.

I was also curious about the DigiGear thingy that comes with Exceller, the review about it being smooth and that the features that they have is what you can find in those expensive high end models. Also Exceller is only like USD 60 which is pretty okay price wise.

I also bought a red fishing line, again sort of curious whether it is true or not as claim by the magazine that red color is invisble under 3 feet of water. Got something to do about red light is totally absorbed or not reflected or some shit like that under 3 feet of water.

Frankly speaking, I don't really see much improvement in catching more fish and I think I sort of bought a line that is slightly too thick. I choose a 12 lb line, should have chosen the 8 lb line which should allow me to cast further and maybe get a better feel of the Daiwa Exceller reel smoothness due to the so called digi-gear.

Anyway I did try the exceller out and unfortunately the only decent size fish that I caught using them is only a 350 gram Flathead and 400 gram flounder/Sole fish with the Daiwa Laguna. Both are not really known to be a great fighter. In fact they just sort of gave up half way and follow the line back to shore.

Caught this flathead using a large live prawn, 2 running ball sinker with about 1 foot of fluorocarbon leader and a size 1/0 circle hook. I read from a local magazine about bouncing the prawn to tempt ambush fish and decided to try it on the sandy part of the Likas Bay, just opposite the KK Port Jetty.

It took me about 20-30 minutes continously casting and reeling the bait before the flathead grab the bait and run with it. It was a short run towards the right side and once I start reeling the line, the flathead sort of follow the line back all the way to the shore. Tide was about 1 metre and water was quite clear.

The sole fish was caught with the Daiwa Laguna reel using similar rig. I threw the line quite far out maybe nearly half way in distance between the shore and the KK Jetty. At first I thought it was a small ray but it was a nice surprise that it was a flounder and being 400gram, sadly is the biggest flounder that I caught so far. I am a shore fisherman wanabe fishing in terribly unproductive and over fished water of Kota Kinabalu.

The tide at that time (Sunday 12 Nov 2006, 10am) is quite low as shown on the right. I think it was about 0.5 meter, KK highest tide is about 2.0 meter from lowest tide.

I suppose fishing in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah from the shore is a very frustrating affair or more like act of meditation than fishing. The sole fish that I caught is by fishing from 7am till 11am. There were like 10-15 other people there and all of them left empty handed at about 10 am.

I feel there is a serious need to introduce minimum size and also bag limit to the shore fishing community in Kota Kinabalu. Looking at the rigs that most fishos here you can tell that they actively target small fish, in fact any fish even as small as 1 finger will be happily bagged by many fishos here.

I cannot imagine what they do with those tiny fishes that they caught. I suppose they would probably like deep fry the fish and easily put the whole fish in their mouth.

I gave up telling them off because every time I asked them why they keep them they all say the same thing.

No big fish
Small fish taste better

I think every weekend KK fishos caught at least 20-25 small fishes the size of one or two fingers.

Those 20-25 can easily grow to about the size of a hand in 1-2 months. One way I suppose is the government should introduce law to fine anyone who keep fish the size smaller than the hand and then increase the minimum size every year by maybe 1 inches or 2 inches.

That way eventually the size of fishes that can be found and caught in Kota Kinabalu/ Sabah water will be bigger. It will however not work unless a huge mega fine of RM 1000 per fish smaller than the minimum limit is imposed. Strong enforcement must also be in place to make sure the rule is followed.

Another thing I feel that the government should do is to completely ban netting by those so called weekend fisherman in Likas Bay. They should at least use nets that are big enough to let fishes smaller than a hand size to escape instead of catching even ikan bilis the size of 1-2 fingers!!!.

Anyway enough ranting. Not a single politicians will be willing to do anything anyway because there is no money to be made by them.

2006-05-08T06:11:00.000-07:00

When you walk through a storm hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of a storm is a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho' your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone,
You'll never, ever walk alone.

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone,
You'll never, ever walk alone.

been busy for so long didn't really had any time to go fishing...

my current passion
Wifey
Baby
Liverpool
World cup 2006

Will see if can go for some fishing sometime this month, just want to post a song that I loved for
so long. :D

2005-12-23T21:58:00.000-08:00

Went and fish for an hour or so at Likas Bay, Kota Kinabalu. Didn't catch anything worth taking home.

I am not sure what fish is the one below, occasionally I will land one or two of them a day (C&R) as usual. I asked som eof the local here and they only say the fish name is Ikan Batu!??

Hmmm other fish that I caught and released is called a Bigeye Snapper (Lutjanus Lutjanus)

Tiny fish but looks quiet beautiful, yellow tail with yellow stripe. I never seems to catch them any bigger than the size of my hand from the shore. Maybe they move to deeper water once they grow bigger or either that the local anglers here just fished them faster than they can grow, either that or my fishing kung fu not strong enough :)

2005-12-17T18:02:00.000-08:00

The saddest thing to me about fishing in Kota Kinabalu is the attitude of some of the local anglers out here. Quite a few of which not only willing keep the tiniest of fish but they actually went out there to target these baby fishes.

Shown above is a beautiful grouper the size of a hand, these would probably be considered a prized catch by some of those sad anglers. This grouper is caught using a size 1, Gamakatsu hook with a bottom rig with a 30g ball sinker.

Another fish that I caught and released is a tiny trevally about the size of a hand. As you can see the fish got hooked in the mouth which is what a circle hook typically do. I usually target bigger trevally but a lot times I got GT the size of a hand. That day alone I caught myself about 8 of these beautiful fish all hooked in the lips. They are too small to keep so release them to hopefully grow up and give me a chance to catch them when they are bigger.

Few days later I managed to catch a bigger size fish. It is about 600gram using my portable mini weighing scale. It is nearly 30cm long, caught it with a 10 lb mono line with a 20 lb fluorocarbon leader with a running 30 gram ball sinker. Typically I will only get trevally when the water is a bit murky. My SKL theory is that when the water is too clear, the other fishes especially the grouper will get to the bait first. Also when the water is murky the trevally being a very careful fish will be less likely to see the line. I am a firm believer of fluorocarbon leader. I did not catch that many fish previously before I use them.

Anway I am a bit sad now because I ordered some items over the net and so far I only received one item which is a soft plastic bait. My polarized sunglasses, my 2km 8lb long distance casting line and my 15 lb fluorocarbon line are missing. I contacted the online merchant and they say sometimes it takes about 6-8 weeks. I am now into the 6th week, hopefully it will arrive in time for chrismas. That would be a perfect christmas gift :).

2005-11-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

Went out fishing on Saturday 12th November and caught 3 types of fish which I have not caught in my normal fishing ground before.

I recently changed my medium rod fishing line to a 10 lb mono so that I can cast the line further. Thinner lines allow me to cast a lot further and the result is I was able to reach areas in the bay which previously I was not able to reach.

Shown in this pages are three fishes, a catfish, a silver grunter and a baby flathead all caught and released that day.

2005-11-05T22:43:00.000-08:00

Fishing have its ups and down and today was one of those day where the weather is good, the tide is good but the fishes simply not bitting.

My dad caught a flounder, not a big one but can't release it back because it swallowed the hook so deep that there is no way to remove it.

It fight for maybe like 20 seconds and then the line goes limp and it just swim towards me dad.

Anyway here is the flounder again.

2005-11-04T18:20:00.000-08:00

Went fishing again today with my two brothers and a friend (Tony). We started fishing about 3pm and tested my brother fish finder. We found out the bay is between 11 feet to 15 feet deep and after throwing in the thing a few times we manage to register one fish on the display.

So anyway this is the second day we tested the so called Hong Kong Hook. We fished for an hour without anything, my older brother got a small grouper which we released.

When we finally caught one it is a whooper of a fish. Very nice size fish which put quite a decent fight. We landed the fish using a 8 lb line with 20 lb leader and a size 4 hook with a small ball sinker. The fish ran with quite a bit of the line put quite a decent fight which really put some strain on the arm. It ran with the line causing the reel to screech with a whiiizzzzzzing sound a number of time..... oh such a sweet sweet sound to hear. :D

This fish (Ikan Cermin/Treadfin Trevally) can really put a good fight due to the shape of its tail and body, however it gets tired pretty fast too, probably after 4-5 runs and if you ever be lucky enough to hook one, make sure you adjust the drag so that it can only pull the line when it go on the powerful runs. You should in fact adjust the reel drag before you cast your line and then re-adjust them again accordingly when you hook a fish. The idea is to set the drag enough to tire the fish without the risk of breaking the line. Do not ever reel the line when the fish go on the power runs, just let the fish run with it, adjusting the drag slightly if necessary and only reel in the line when the fish stop running. Always make sure you do not give the fish any slack line otherwise it will shook the hook out of its mouth and you will go home as usual with a tall tale of the 10kg fish that got away ;)

Above is my older brother Nico and a big fish and on the left is my little brother Ben also with a big fish.

We fished for a while until about 6pm. It rained a few times as you can see my brother Nico was wearing a rain coat.

As you can see we caught three large fishes or maybe it be the same fish but we each took turn to take picture with it ;) tehehe.. anyway lets not bore everyone with too much detail :D

Half an hour after that fish was caught I caught me self a small Trevally as shown below. On the right is me with a big fish :D

Our friend Tony which my brother Nico managed to convince to come despite of the rain also managed to land a slightly bigger Trevally than I did about 20 minutes later. As shown below.

My brother Nico with a trevally. Overall I would say it is a very nice outing. We will probably fish again tomorrow. Our dad cook a nice fish head curry which my lil sissy say taste nice. Didnt manage to go home to eat the fish cos I had to bring out a visiting friend from Tawau for dinner .

2005-11-03T18:02:00.000-08:00

Read a local Rod&Line magazine and they talked about a hook setup called Hong Kong Hook. It's a hook which have a sinker attached to it.

I can't find it anywhere in the local store so the closes to it I manage to get is to use a size 4 hook with a small ball sinker as shown on the right.

Anyway, off I go to test the setup. Recently I got a medium light fishing rod with a 8 lb line. This is out of frustration of not landing any large fish. So hopefully with this setup and of course a 20 lb leader any fish between 500gram to 2 kg landed will hopefully be a lot more fun.

Previous fish I got was like using a 15 lb line and 25 lb leader and big reel and 9 foot rod which is kind of overkill for the fishes caught from the shore in Kota Kinabalu.

Anyway I went at about 3pm local time and fish until about 5pm with my brother Ben. There was already 2 people there fishing that place. From the look of it they don't seem to have any luck.

So after fishing like for an hour, I got a tap on the line and whoosh the fish run witht the bait. I pull back the rod to set the hook and let the fish run while making sure not to give the fish any slack line. Overall it was quite fun although being a small fish it is over in a very short time.

Shown on the left is the fish on a plate, not a big one but big enough for dinner.

2005-10-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

My brother Ben with a large grouper caught at our normal fishing ground, the largest grouper we ever caught :D

This fish tend to grab the bait and run straight under the rock and stays there. If you didnt manage to pull it before it run under a rock don't try to pull it out by force, if you do so you will probably break your line.

The best way I learned from experience of landing these type of fish is to tighten the line till the fish cannot move deeper under the rock and just leave the fish there for about 10-15 minutes.

This will tire down the fish, after that length of time, try and see whether you can pull it out slowly. If the fish still will not buldge, the next step is to loosen the line and make the fish think it is free.

Keep holding on to the rod and get ready to reel in the line fast. Once the fish think it is free it will slowly move out from the hole and start swimming around. When that happened reel in as fast as you can and don't let the fish go under another rock.

This fish was landed with a light rod with 12 lb line and 25 lb leader, with a circle hook and live prawn bait.

Shown on above is the fish being cleaned by my dad the fisherman and the chef ;)

2005-09-23T19:49:00.000-07:00

Yay!!! caught me first barramundi, I think it is a barramundi.. :)

locally it is known as Selunsung, this one probably about 1.5 feet and weigh maybe about 1kg or somewhere there

Anyway, my camera date is off again :(

It should have been 23rd September 2005. Oh well.. at least it can still take picture

Okay, the picture below is a bit funny, my dad snagged a male crab which in turn hold on to a female crab :)

Below is the close up picture of the two crabs with our prawn baits that we use for fishing

2005-09-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

Picture on the left is my dad with the only catch of the day.

Today was a good day, the weather is a bit cloudy so quite nice to fish, the tide is okaish only about 0.9 metres out of the possible highest tide of 2.0 metres for Kota Kinabalu.

My older brother Nico and me reached the bay about 3.30pm. As you can see my dad is wearing a very nice shirt and pants, the moment he heard that my brother and me went fishing, he straight away called me and say he will be joining us after church, he arrived shortly with my sissy, I think it was about 4pm.

Shortly after that, he caught the Threadfin Trevally and although I didnt get a single fish worth keeping I had fun.

Picture on the right is the picture of my lovely little sissy, Jessica. She sat there and watched us fish and helped us to take the live prawn bait.

Hmmm looks like this blog is turning more like a fishing blog.

My chilli project is moving pretty slow, the Chocolate Habenero seed that I planted just germinated today. So I am looking forward to the chilli growing.

Meh.. maybe when I have something good to talk about my chilli project I add something till then I guess this blog will be somewhat a fishing blog :D

Hmmmm I just realised today is September 11, I remembered when that dispicable act of cowardice happened, I was shocked and at the same time angry. While I am here able to spend time with my family there are many that cant anymore because of a coward action by a group of stupid dumb ass misguided religious fanatics. My thoughts and prayers today goes to those that lost thier loved ones during 911 incident.

2005-09-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

This picture of my brother Nico and the fishes that we caught. He came back from Brunei this weekend and I brought him out to go fish at the place that I found recently.

We fished from 4pm till about 6pm, not bad for 2 hours of fishing for Kota Kinabalu standard. Most time, I fished whole day and get totally nothing worth bringing home. Today we caught two nice fish.

One is a Treadfin Trevally on his left and the other one is... hmmmm I dunno, some rock fish? There are heaps of those fish around but most of them are the size of 2-3 fingers which are not worth keeping and better off released back to grow.

It was raining quite heavily in the morning but the tide was also quite low in the morning so we cant really fish anyway. I actually had a bit of reservation on whether we will get anything today because from previous experience, after any downpour the fishes are not really keen on bitting. The tide is the highest at about 4pm so we reached there with the highest tide possible for that day which is 1.1 metres.

The downpour in the morning flooded all my chilli trees pot so I had to like spend whole morning repotting my chilli trees.

2005-09-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

Woke up late today and had to take half-day off, went out to see my dad fish at the place that I told him I caught the nice fish the other day. :)

And he caught one!!! The picture on the left is the fishy with me of course being the one to claim it. My dad is camera shy ;) so someone have to do the dirty work.

One last fish picture on the cutting board. This fish is called Golden Trevally, my dad use live prawn to catch it.

Oh well almost time to go to work, I had to take shower and prepare for work.

My sick chilli tree is still alive not so sure for how long it will last

2005-09-03T22:04:00.000-07:00

Today is a mixture of good and bad

The Bad News
the bad part of today is I notice one of my chilli tree is shedding leaves, it does not look like a natural thingy. It could be dying or sick or diseased.

Anyway on the right is the picture of the chilli tree.

All the other 3 trees are okay except for this one. It can't be due to lack of nutrient because I put some fertilizer last week.

Too much water? maybe...

Too little sun? maybe too... :(

Could it be the worm that i put there? can't be... I think..

Oh yeah talking about that earthworms, I notice that they are already started doing their work. See the soil that is slightly darker in color in the picture beow. That is their mojo that they excrete by recycling all the organic waste in the soil.

The Good News

The good news for today is, I went fishing and caught meself a decent size fishy :D, yay for me...

The local name for the fish here is Ikan Cermin, or translated directly to English is Mirror Fish. As you can see the skin of the fish is pretty shiny, which is why I supposed the local here gave them that name.

Anyway another picture of the fishy, placed on a cutting board with a 12 inches ruler next to it. I think the english name for that fishy is threadfin trevally, which got the name due to its thread like fin, which normally disappear once the fish is like mature.

I think this one must have been like a Juvenile fishy.

2005-08-31T18:29:00.000-07:00

Planted 6 species of chilli on the 30th of August 2005, namely:

Fatalli (2nd September 2005) - 3 days after planting
Chocolate Habanero (Not germinate yet)
Orange Habanero (7th September 2005) - 8 days after planting
Red Savina Habanero (1st September 2005) - 2 days after planting
Bulgarian Carrot (Not germinate yet)
Caribbean Red (1st September 2005) - See picture below next to the wormy

On the left is a picture of the chilli that I got from Vietnam. Still not sure what species it is, still scouring the internet to find out. Still no luck.

Anyway, recent thing that I added to the chilli tree is a few earth worm that I got from my dad's garden.

I saw in discovery channel about the worm being good for plants and stuff and it supposedly produce the best fertilizer which is even better than commercial ones.

I released about 5 each per pot, hopefully if they survive they should be doing their magic of creating their black poo. Well anyway it looks exactly like the one below. I forgot to take a snapshot of it. Grab this from some site through google.

2005-08-25T04:20:00.000-07:00

Orange Chilli!!!

Yay, my chilli turns color today 24th August 2005!!

Omg I just noticed :( my digital camera date is still 2004!!!

Oh well, anyway since the last entry, the chilli seeds that I bought from South Africa and planted have germinated.

I now have over 25 small chilli trees!!! The problem is being so much looking forward to planting them, I kinda forget to label the pots what the species of chilli I planted :(

So now I don't know which tree is which but they are one of, RED SAVINA HABANERO, Golden Habanero or Bolivian Rainbow.

My bad!!! Oh well I am just happy that they germinate, at least my spending of USD 40 on them is not a waste of dough.So my plan of chilli invasion of my hometown is moving according to plan huehuahue....Shown below are two of such trees, as you can see they are still tiny and slightly different in color.

Seeing the chilli seed actually grew into a tiny chilli tree makes me feel somewhat over my head and I bought another pack of chillies, this time its from UK. I just can't help myself when I saw the chilli fruits that they supposedly will produce.

Shown below are the ones that I selected. It cost me £1.95 each packets. I bought like 12 packets, each of the following species.

Chocolate Habanero
Fatalii
Bulgarian Carrot
Antillais Caribbean
Chiltepin
Marbles
Habanero Paper Lantern
NuMex Twilight
Caribbean Red Hot
Orange Habanero
Red Savina Habanero
Jalapeno

Add that with the one I got previously, I now have in my hand 17 species of chilli. Other species not listed above are - Golden Habenero, Hungarian Cheery, Bolivian Rainbox and French Wax and of course the unknown chilli from Vienam.

The one I like the most is the NuMex Twilight, picture on the right, quite colorful species of chilli. I didn't realised there are so many species of chillies!!!

Alrighty then, how about more pictures of those chillies that I bought

Fatalii, Chocolate Habanero

Chiltepin

Aeeew time to have dinner, don't have any fishing entry this time, except someone caught a 4.5kg Giant Trevally at Likas Bay. Tall tale??? maybe :) me dad saw it with his own eyes, so he say :D

But then again me dad is a retired teacher cum full time fisherman and as we all know all fisherman exagerate the fish that got away or that they saw, in fact it will probably "mutated" to be a 100kg shark in a week time.

2005-08-12T07:37:00.000-07:00

Fish and Chilli

Okay, that's me on the right somewhere in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Chilli blog??? well yeah, I got my first chilli there
I have no idea what type of Chilli it is, hopefully someone who is bored enough to come and see my blog can one day enlighten me.

Anyway the building is a nice Opera House, it's next to the Hilton Hotel in Hanoi, I think the name of the building is "Nha Hat Lon Ha Noi". What does it mean? aew... no idea, me noh ablow vietnamese.

Jolly good then, lets go back to this blog, I have no idea how this will turn out or why I am even doing this. I guess I am a little bored with work and stuff and right now and want to pass some time, I am also kinda into planting Chilli. It started I guess quite a while back when I went to Melbourne with the missus and tasted a very hot chilli. Tried bringing some back to my hometown in Kota Kinabalu and planting them but none of the seeds actually germinate. Then, while on a business trip to Hanoi, I get to taste another hot chilli which somewhat similar to the one I tasted in Melbourne. It's nothing special really, just big and hot, different than the one we got back home.

So got the chilli back. Drop it on one of the vase at my place and about 2 months later I got 4 chilli trees. They started extremely well and start blooming with flowers after like 4 weeks, I think. The chilli seems to use lots of water and I kinda have to water them quite often, at least once a day just to make sure the soil is like damp. My place is near the sea so maybe it gets dried easily due to the windy condition. Then after like 6 weeks, 3 of the trees start having leaves that kinda curl in and turning yellowish. I was quite worried and also lost as to why it happened, the one that looked healthy was planted on a different totally type of soil. It got the same amount of water as the others.

I google all over and found out that it could be any one of the reasons listed below:

Over watering
Lack of nutrient
Some sort of chilli disease

What did I do? Well I decided to repot the 3 into a different type of soil, using a black slightly fine soil compared to the black husky type of soil. I also bought a bag of fertilizer and put like 2 teaspoons every 10 days. Chicken dung.

Result is as shown on the right, nice big fat chilli the size of my thumb. I have so far waited for 3 weeks for the chilli to turn red. So far no luck. Maybe it will turn red soon.

Anyway that is my first chilli. I kinda purchase a chilli kit from some online site in South Africa. Planted the seeds on the 11 August 2005. Not very sure they will germinate, I do hope so cos they are supposedly the hottest chilli in the world. I think the name is RED SAVINA HABANERO, Golden Habanero and Bolivian Rainbow.

Okay, I think I have enough about chilli for now, so lets talk a bit about fishing. How about the one on the left for a beautiful fish, It's a small fish, catch it with a circle hook, what is a circle hook? well it's a hook which is supposedly will hook a fish on the lips 97% of the time. So far it work fine for me, catch them and release them after that. I don't really fancy eating fish just like to go fishing to pass time. Lemme find more fish pictures to display.

Hmmmmm how about a spotted grouper shown on the right, not bad looking fish too. Very easy to catch, of course too small to keep so release them too. Anyway I think I will end this blog entry with

A famous angler's prayer that any serious angler should know

"Lord, grant that I may catch a fish so big that even I, When speaking of it afterwards, may have no need to lie"