HARUAN BONANZA

This article was published in the October 2002 issue of Rod And Line Fishing Magazine.

After a few half-hearted casts at the three sterile looking ponds, I almost gave up. These three ponds looked very quiet. There were no weeds covering the edges of the ponds. Instead of ever expanding concentric rings, the water surface was like a giant mirror. Seeing my dejected look Raju suggested I try one more pond about a hundred meters away.

Ronnie at work. Look at that pond. How can there be no grandfather haruans.

Standing on the edge of this pond, my heart was beating like a racing car engine piston. The edges were covered with over hanging weeds and shaded by some trees in some parts. The water surface was full of floating plants and runners. This, my friend, was the perfect haruan pond.

Being a businessman dealing with fruits, Raju has all the connections regarding orchards and fruit plantations. He first told me about these ponds about a month ago. These ponds were located in a huge neglected durian plantation near Ipoh. Fenced up, neglected plantation ponds translate into haruan Shangri-La.

The gang with the catches.

My first cast was passed, but not the second. Subsequently almost every second cast produced a strike. Seeing a small water inlet, I cast my frog beyond it. After a few turns of the spinning reel handle, my frog was whacked. What followed was haruan fishing beyond my wildest dream. James waiting some twenty meters away could not take it anymore and came bulldozing through the bush. The whole area, covered with tall grass was flattened by him in no time. I had to shift to another place when James budged in and placed his bulk in front of me. All in he landed about fifteen haruans before our supply of twenty frogs was exhausted (reconnaissance trip lah). Raju was beaming from ear to ear on the way back carrying all the haruans we gave him.

That night, James and I sensed a lot of hints and veiled threats coming from Mong and Ronnie. In the end we had no choice as we were threatened with erasing our names from their “friends” list. Furthermore, that night all the delicious food that we had was fully paid for.

Come Sunday, James and I had Ronnie and Mong tagging along. Fanning out to the four sides of the pond, we settled down to fish. The whole surface of the pond was covered with a kind of runners crisscrossing each others. Mong was the first to land a fish. Next was James. Everywhere I looked at least one of my friends was either landing or fighting a haruan.

In haruan fishing, it is not a matter of blind casting all over the place. We must either think like a haruan or “attend the same university together with them” to improve our chances of landing one. The usual places to look for them were the banks (weed covered and undercut) of the ponds. Shaded banks with floating vegetation were also their favorite haunts. Another regular hang-out would be some sunken logs. Water outlet and inlets were normally productive areas too.

Yours truly casting out to the pond. See the floating runners on the surface? They made landing the haruans quite difficult.

Contrary to the usual practice, fishing for haruans here did not require the usual camouflage tactics or the need for us to be quiet. Haruans were so plentiful and hungry here that even if we were to use spoons, we could land plenty of them. The only reason I did not use lure was because of the abundance of weeds. With my pay, I would have to work in three different jobs to cover all the lost lures. We were of the opinion that any new angler who did not know how to fish would catch at least one.

There was this corner of the pond, shaded by an overhanging tree that caught my interest. My deduction was, being shady, that place should at least housed one haruan. Instead of one, I caught four of them. All one got to do was to cast the frog to the weed edge, twitch it slightly and then retrieve.

Ronnie unhooking one of his haruans.

Bang! The frog would be grabbed. Well, landing the haruan was another problem though. The floating runners were always a nuisance. Most of the time, the snakeheads would tangled themselves around these weeds and achieved their freedom. The beauty of this place was after losing one, all you had to do was to keep on casting to the same spot and you would be rewarded again.

As the haruans that we caught looked like being produced from some cookie assembly lines. They were all of the same size and length, plus or minus a few grams. None of them weighed more than 800gms. They could not be from the same set of parents nor being born on the same day. Being 800gm in weight, their parents must be bigger. That was what was going through my mind. Every cast that I made was full of the eternal hope of landing those parents or the whopper grandparents. Somehow images of those XXLs lurking under the weed was always on my mind.

Sauntering over to where Ronnie was busy unhooking his haruan, I inquired about his result. That satisfied grin on his face was his answer. Looking closer I noticed that his eyes were wide and twinkling with indescribable satisfaction.

Our rigs here were the usual haruan rig. All our rigged frogs had their legs cut. If the legs were not cut, then the haruans would get free lunches most of the time. You see when the haruans grabbed the frogs, most of the time they would get the legs. Normally they would run with the frogs dangling out of their mouths. Even though you wait for a wee bit longer, you would still yank the frog out of their mouths. My usual method was to wait for about three seconds from the first tap before I struck. By then the haruan would have taken the whole frogs into their mouths.

On the way out we met some contract workers who were employed to clear the undergrowth to make the plantation more presentable to any prospective buyers. Most of the haruans were given to them so as to pave the way for our next trip here (the Malaysian colloquial term is ‘jacking’). We got the shock of our lives a week later. The whole pond was drained. Well, the typical Malaysian selfish character of “One day’s curry” was at work again. Instead of getting a steady supply of haruans, they cleared the whole lot!

Now you know why some anglers guard their secret spots like Ali Baba’s treasure. Most of us acquired this habit by being victims of circumstances.