CATCHING THE GOOD LIFE HARUANS

This article was published in the April 2004 issue of Rod and Line Fishing Magazine.

“Ng can you help me cull some haruans from my friend’s pond ah?” asked Phang Yee Seng. “Huh!” I replied not trusting my ears. He repeated the request, which made me laugh like a hyena. Phang’s request was just like asking a tiger whether it can help take care of the lambs in a pan.

According to Phang, this pond belongs to his friend, Ah Foo. Adult fish from other ponds were transferred here to be fattened up for the market. Recently, he (Ah Foo) decided to stock this pond with thousands of tilapia fries. What followed was the biggest “kenduri” held this side of the Kinta Valley. Hordes of hungry haruans were circling schools of fries and picking them off like the RAF fighters downing German bombers during the famous Battle of Britain.

Meng with one of his haruans, taken with a spinner-bait. He was very successful with it.

You see, the pond being too big and deep to be harvested by the usual netting, had been left untouched for seven years. The method used to harvest the fish here was by dumping food into a satellite pond. When the fish rushed in to feed, a net was lowered to close the connecting channel and the trapped fish could then be harvested at will. Imagine what piscatorial monsters would lurk in a pond not harvested for seven years! Add to that, a gigantic haruan was caught recently. 

Here Phang was posing with one of his shell-spoon taken haruans.

Standing on the edge of the pond and watching the mist slowly cleared from the water surface, my hands were shaking as though going on my first date. My heart was drumming like crazy, pounding something like IGFA, IGFA, IGFA (IGFA record lah).

Ah Meng, using a weighted spinner bait and was the first to lock onto a kilo plus haruan. After a few short runs (as all haruans do), it was netted. This was followed by another, and another, then another. He seemed to be the pipe piper for haruans. Phang was really frustrated after Ah Meng caught his fifth haruan and started calling him Elvis (Chinese referred to Elvis Presley as Mow Wong or King of Cats) in the process. Just when Phang was at the point of exploding, a haruan hammered his frog bait and his scowl turned into a smile.

It had been a long time since I got a haruan of this size.

After taking some photographs for them (I had not started fishing yet), I went off to a deeper part of the pond to fish. This part of the pond had its banks covered by some overhanging shrubs. My theory was that, if kid haruans of a kilo plus were hanging around the shallower parts then the great-grandpas and great-grandmas must be somewhere else……where else?

Being relatively snag free, here I chose to use the shell spoon, introduces by Robert Goh of Taiping. Surprisingly, there were no giant strikes, as anticipated. A true follower of the concept of “The magic of thinking big”, I kept on casting and retrieving the spoon. Maybe the haruans and I went to different schools, for I just could not get any fish. From the corner of my eyes, I could see that Phang and Ah Meng were catching and landing scores of them. In the end, their “Got ANY (with emphasis on ANY) fish ah? “really got on my nerves.

Surprise of all surprises, a marble goby took Phang's frog.

Somehow, the IGFA record mission was abandoned and I rushed over to where they were (All motivational training about being positive and persistent went down the drain, or rather the pond). When my spoon hit the water, I allowed it to sink a few seconds, before starting to retrieve. Giving my rod tip a couple of twitches, I felt a light tug and wham, a kilo plus haruan was my reward!

The haruans here were so plentiful that many a time, my shell spoon was grabbed the moment it hit the water. Human beings are such, when the pickings are good, they become choosy. Yours truly was guilty of it too. You would not believe me if I were to say, we chose to cast to the big rises. Remember, that the size of the swirl was directly proportional to the size of the fish. This was the ultimate snobbish haruan fishing of the highest order, I presumed.

This tilapia, held up by Ah Meng, was one of the few that hit my spoon.

Haruans were not the only fish that were plentiful here. We were surprised when Phang pulled up a marble goby (ketutu) when it grabbed his frog bait. More surprise followed when a marble goby gobbled up my shell spoon. Mind you, the shell spoon attracted the tilapias too, as proven by the few specimens that I landed.

We were enjoying ourselves so much with the very cooperative and presentable haruans that we forgot the time. My mission of catching the IGFA record haruan was temporary forgotten too. Somehow the aim of catching record size haruans was discarded quite fast when everyone was getting fish and you got none. But your stomach always has the last say at the end of the day. When it started rumbling and my hands started shaking from hunger, I had no choice but to rest and have something to eat.

Plonking myself onto a piece of plank (of course making sure there is no protruding nail) I made myself comfortable under a shed before tucking into my ‘lunch’. Phang joined me later. While eating, he suddenly announced, “Ng, do you think you are having a good life so far?” I was taken aback by his question. Pondering for a while I answered apprehensive, “I think I am ok.” “Go take a look at what the fish are eating and then answer my question again,” he laughed.

Sauntering over to where Leo, the Indonesian worker, was preparing food for the fish, I got the surprised of my life. He was cutting open packets of large prawns, meatballs and Chinese silver pomfrets (Pamus chinesis) into a big cauldron. Yes, Chinese silver pomfrets or ‘tow tai yee’ in Cantonese! I headed back to where Phang was with head bowed and ego deflated. On the way home all of us were in deep thoughts, maybe reflecting on our lives.

Leo, the Indonesian worker, putting pomfrets, meatballs and large prawns into the cauldron.

The pond was so infested with haruans that it took us ten more trips there before we encountered a pak koh (empty handed) day. Most of the days we landed more than twenty haruans of over a kilo in size. Of course we took only one or two for our kenduries, with the rest being returned to a beaming Ah Foo.