Sunday, April 22, 2007

Fishing - born naturally

Last Friday, I went to an overnight fishing trip to BNO Kelong of the Sabak Bernam. It cost me RM138 for fishing only including 5 meals but excluding accommodation. This does not count the traveling cost. Not a good day, catch some Gelama and Semilang.. Anyway, the fishig trip was fun but costly..

It was not the same back then when I was growing up in my kampung. Fishing was fun and free.

I did lots of fishing activities, in many different ways. Using the famaous bamboo rod (kail bog), serkap, gugoh, timba telaga, catch with freehand, taut, serampang, senapang, tuba - you name it.. Will try to get some photos to of some of these fishing equipments. It all about catching just a few type of fishes - the most popular one were haruan, keli, puyu and lampam.. No wonder my fishing kaki here always joke with me that I only know puyu and haruan wheneever I cannot name a fish.

I remember one day my mother woke me up saying that I should go down to river (big river as there are two rivers in my kampung - the small - sungai kecik and the big one - sungai besar) and join the "party". I found out later that fishes were dying and kampung folks were all enjoying themselves collecting fish that were floating down the river. There was (and still in operation till now) a new sugar factory build in Padang Sanai that dumped its leftover from sugarcane into Sungai padang Sanai which flow into the Sungai Besar. This had polluted the river badly, killing all sort of fish. (Note - I was told that the factory was asked to rectify the problem including releasing benih ikan back into river, and now the river is back to be fishing heaven for local again).

The big event of the day was when one of the kampung folk landed a big ikan tongsan I guess. It was easily 5kg. Being thankful to his catch, he held feast (kenduri) and practically invited all.

Will share some more of this events, and the other fishing activities I did then.

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