‘OB Club’ 2011 Sailfish Adventure
July 9th, 2011 | By Ocean Blue
5th-10th October, 2011
Ocean Blue Fishing is inviting anglers to join them on the ‘OB Club’2011 Sailfish Adventure to fish fantastic Kuala Rompin, Malaysia. This adventure offers anglers a great value sports fishing adventure suitable for all skill and experience levels. The fishing is during peak sailfish season and this will be a fun adventure offering OB Club members the opportunity to enjoy an international sportfishing trip, with the subsequent articles and footage as a nice record of the adventure!
The Sails average in size around 30 – 45kg and provide awesome action on light sports tackle. The fish here are very active and aggressive and allow anglers the opportunity to target them using a variety of techniques including live baiting, skip baits and casting surface lures (poppers and stickbaits). When the action is hot, multiple hookups are common and retrieving your lure or livebait from the water when someone is fighting a hooked fish often prompts a solid strike and another fish to deal with!
The boats used to fish these waters are locally made fibreglass boats between 28-33 ft in length and are powered by single or twin outboard engines. They are long, narrow and fast and all have live bait tanks and GPS units fitted. They are not flash hi-tech gameboats as many of us are used to, but are basic, simple and effective boats for these waters. We know the sailfish are the stars of the destination, and the fishing and experience is the main attraction for our anglers to fishing Rompin.
This trip is ideal for…
* Anglers wanting to fish calm waters offering top light tackle sailfish action
* Anglers looking for a unique Malaysian adventure combining pristine surrounds with excellent fishing
*Solo anglers looking to make their adventure more affordable by joining a group adventure.
*Suitable for small or large groups.
2011 Sailfish Adventure Itinerary
October 5th 2011
Arrival into Singapore airport, where we will meet with all our group and transfer over the border into Malaysia and up to the Lanjut Beach and Golf Resort Kuala Rompin.
October 6th – 9th 2011
Each day you will be collected from the resort and board your vessel for the run out to the grounds. Here you will use techniques including live baiting, trolling and popper casting to target numerous sailfish in the calm, warm waters.
The abundance of sailfish available is such a drawcard to fishing Rompin, it’s common here to have multiple hookups, free jumping fish, and dozens of shots at fish each day. Other species encountered include marlin, cobia, mackeral, trevally and mahi mahi, making Rompin a very exciting light tackle destination.
On completion of each days fishing, you will return to the Lanjut Golden Beach & Golf resort base and enjoy the evening at your own leisure.
October 10th 2011
Final Day
Transfer will be provided from your accommodation to Singapore in time for your return flight home.
Inclusions
• Return Singapore airport/Rompin transfers • 5 nights single share accommodation staying at the Lanjut Golden Beach & Golf Resort, including breakfast daily • 4 days sport fishing on 28 – 33ft fibreglass twin outboard sports boats • lunch and snacks whilst on board • captain • all evening meals
Note – Does not include Flights
Package Price: AUD$2610.00 per angler
Booking Procedure and flights
Because of the distance and transfer to Kuala Rompin we will arrange for a coach to transfer anglers together as one group to and from Rompin. Flight schedules are very important, I can advise on the correct flight for anglers booking their own flights into Singapore. If possible we further recommend to arrive a day early into Singapore. The above itinerary and prices are a guide only and may be subject to change.
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At my feet is my camera, but in my hand is a Daiwa Saltiga threadline outfit, one of the best that money can buy. I’ve just re-cast my stickbait out across the low windchop. Now I’m jerking it with short, erratic snaps of my wrist to make the plastic cigar twitch enticingly, imitating a crippled survivor of a sailfish attack on the multitudes of herring, yellowtail scad or Indian mackerel that proliferate in the area. It’s one of many casts I’ve made in the brief intervals between strikes on the livebait lines poised under balloons at the rear of the craft. The frustrating part is that I can see sailfish crashing baitfish all around us, yet few take more than curious interest in my plastic imitation. The truly exciting part is that I can see hundreds of sailfish feeding all around us! They’re everywhere – and on many occasions throughout the day, one of the other boats in our party will have a sailfish hooked up and jumping nearby. 
Black-headed terns are sparsely scattered throughout these feeding grounds, occasionally joined by pterodactyl-like frigate birds that circle much higher until something catches their laser-keen eyes. The terns are randomly spread, flying at hunting height as they scan the surface for action. We’re all watching them as they’re watching the sails. When several birds group together, then wheel down to skim the water, we know there’s a sailfish on the surface and feeding. Sure enough, just 70m to the left of our bow, three terns swoop down and, within seconds, there’s the tall dorsal fin and sickle tail of a sailfish as it casually engulfs another hapless baitfish that it’s chased to the surface. I fire another cast in that direction. Twitch, twitch… Nothing. Twitch, twitch, twitch… Nothing! My retrieve nears the bow and I’m already scanning the vicinity to see where my next cast should land. Then, just as I’m about to lift the lure from the surface, there it is! A purple/chocolate smudge materialises from the green soup and suddenly there’s over 7ft of billfish just in front of me – and the tip of it’s bill is right behind my lure! Twitch, twitch… I’ve got no room left to retrieve! The fish and lure are just below my feet. There’s nowhere left to go; the wind-on leader is at my rod tip. If I lift the lure for another cast I know the sail will simply peel away and disappear. There’s no option; I flick the lure in a stationary position, giving it as much motion as I can without actually retrieving. The sailfish eyes it warily. It’s certainly curious – even tempted – but with so many options around, it can be fussy. It seems a hopeless situation, but with my heart pumping hard and my breath on hold … the sailfish strikes! At this range, and on 30lb braided GSP line, the strike is a jarring whack! But that’s all it is. The sail grips the lure, rattles it (and me), then rejects the imitation despite the swinging – billfish-rigged – assist-hook adaptation hanging from its belly. It was over in a second and thefish disappeared towards the stern. ‘Great’, I thought! 
Sure enough, moments later, as I gathered up my camera, one of the balloons briefly scurried across the low chop before pulling free. In the cockpit, a short loop of line pulled from beneath a rubber band retainer set on the rod’s foregrip and peeled friction-free from one of the three threadline outfits, set in freespool with the bail arm open. It was a scene we’d all watched countless times in the previous three days. Seconds later, another sailfish was gyrating across the stern, screeching braid from a threadline reel as a scorching run took it from right behind the outboard to 300m away in seconds. The sails’ blistering speed tore line through the surface in a racing gash that sounded like tearing fabric. The incredible runs of these fastest-of-all-fish left anglers breathless as their quarry bounded for the horizon, barely entering the water before leaping back into the air in a continuous welter of spray. A frothing trail of smashed water traced its path between the packs of swooping birds and drifting boats nearby.
Our party consisted of anglers from all walks of life and all levels of angling experience. It was an interesting collection that included truck drivers, businessmen, a butcher, a retiree and his son, and a top-level corporate lawyer. All mixed wonderfully, and each day the morning and evening meals were a hotpot of excited tales and new experiences. We fished four of our five days spent in Rompin, taking a day off in the middle to head via coach to the city of Kuantan (two hours away) for a shopping spree. At 8.30am on each of the fishing mornings, after a leisurely breakfast, we’d head for what we jokingly called ‘the marina’. We fished a full day and would not depart the grounds until 5.30pm that evening, arriving back at the resort around 7pm in time for a quick shower before dinner. ‘The marina’ was a small, rickety, timber platform nestled on the edge of the nearby river among thick vegetation. To get there we boarded a golf buggy, a van that also carried the mound of personal tackle we’d brought or (most fun of all) the tractor shuttle. It was a short run, down past the golf course, and along the was small family groups of monkeys sat along the margins, spectators to an amusing procession. 
The sportfishing industry in Malaysia is still in its infancy. Local sportfishing for sailfish only started this decade and has gained momentum in just the past four or five years. To encourage its development, the Royal Pahang Billfish International Challenge (RPBIC) was instigated six years ago. From slow beginnings, it now attracts participants from as far as Australia (see Tournament News in this issue). Sailfish are caught off much of Malaysia’s coastline, but they seem to aggregate in vast numbers off Kuala Rompin. No research as to why has been done on this – nor on anything else about this huge population – but the broad, shallow waters off Rompin also hold a booming fishery for anchovies, and this may have a lot to do with it. Sailfish may or may not eat the anchovies themselves, but they certainly do eat the multitudes of larger baitfish that also aggregate on the grounds to gorge on the anchovies. Anchovies are purse-seined throughout he region, but the anchovies off Rompin are the juveniles, which are much more valuable. Each day, numbers of large seiners worked round us as we drifted the grounds. They would scan the area for a school and then mark it with a float before setting their net around the whole lot. Then, having hauled their catch aboard, they’d fire up their boiling vats to briefly cook them before transferring them to the drying racks piled high at the stern. The timber they use to boil the vats must be very green and damp as, whenever they started the fires, such billowing black smoke poured from the vessels that you would swear there was a maritime disaster happening. 
Malaysia has a central government, but the region is divided up into states that have a royal family to take care of local administration. Crown Prince Abdullah of Pahang (the region that includes Rompin) has taken part in the RPBIC and is keen to develop the local sportfishing industry. To this end, the royal family has declared that within the Kuala Rompin district it’s illegal to kill sailfish. Before 2004, huge numbers of sailfish were caught and sold at the local markets. Now they are reserved for anglers. One of the local captains mentioned that sails of less than 1kg are sometimes seen and caught on the Rompin grounds.
Whatever the future holds for the sailfish of Rompin, the fact is that there are many thousands of them there at present – although one captain told me that the current average (20-30kg?) specimens are noticeably smaller than the 12ft monsters that were once common. The 20m-deep sailfish grounds that the local boats fish are between 12 and 25 miles offshore. Here the sea bed is a mixture of broken coral rubble and mud. But these shallows, which sailfish prefer, extend off Rompin for much further than that. Who knows how thick the fish are in the clearer waters out really wide? Sailfish are available all year off Rompin, but the Monsoon season begins around November and doesn’t finish until around the end of February. The best fishing season is between late July and November. Winds are consistently light – usually between 0-5 knots in the mornings, then 5- 10 knots in the afternoon. There is barely any swell. The sailfish seemed more inclined to feed on the surface when there was a slight wind chop, but this reduced again if the wind strengthened to produce white caps. Due to the gentle breeze, the fishing seemed better in the afternoons. These pleasant conditions make the Rompin sailfish grounds ideal for those uncertain about ocean fishing, or those prone to seasickness.
The local technique involves finding the anchovies /sailfish/birds and then switching off the engine and drifting with livebaits set under breakaway balloons. Apparently, trolling with either baits or lures is out of the question – because they have a better technique. The baitfish are jigged-up on the grounds with small sabiki jig rigs. The most prolific of the species we caught were two types of yellowtail scad, a herring, a pink reef fish and Indian mackerel. These were somewhat crudely rigged by pinning them straight on to a small (4/0 or 5/0) offset circle hook placed through the nose or through the back. Frustratingly, the local crews (with limited English) were reluctant to consider any ideas or alternate rigs or techniques. They obviously caught plenty of fish (it was hard not to with so many available) and probably considered that they had it all perfected. 
Interestingly, while we were at Rompin, two highly experienced Sydney fly fishermen were also there to fish exclusively with tease-and-switch fly techniques. They had found an amenable captain and were trolling daisy-chains of fresh squid from a similar boat. When they had a sail come up on the teasers, they’d draw it closer to the boat, then take the engine out of gear and cast their feathered fly to the, by now, aggressive billfish. Using fly tackle is a demanding challenge. Dedicated proponents happily trade potential quantities of catch for a few fly-caught fish that they value far higher. Even so, fishing from just one boat, Gordon Dunlop and Neil Sheppard say they saw between 2500 and 4000 feeding sailfish during their 10 days of fishing off Rompin. They raised 386 sailfish with the teasers and actually landed 22 of them on fly. The staggering thought is that Gordon says if they were switching the teased sails to a livebait instead of an artificial fly, he believes they could have caught most of them! 
It was a fabulous trip and all involved had an absolute ball. Besides the fishing, we had lots of fun at an endof-week ‘mad hatters’ day, where we all wore absurd hats in friendly competition for a nominal prize. Then there was the shopping trip – and what an experience that was. Some of the crew, being dyed-in-the-wool Aussies, decided that they couldn’t last the drive home from Kuantan without a few chilled beverages. With admirable ingenuity, they scoured a (Muslim) shopping centre, found one of the rare stores that sold beer, then bought a garbage bin from a supermarket and ice from another outlet and snuck the loaded bin into the rear of the coach to set up the ‘clubrooms’ for the relaxed journey home. There were a lot of laughs and at the end of the trip it was difficult to say goodbye to all the newfound friends. In fact, there was a general commitment to reconvene the party at a future date and do it all again in some other fabulous gamefishing destination. 
