Crabbing at Sembawang

So its my third time crabbing and things are improving marginally. Met up at Yang's place for dinner and headed to Bottle Tree Village with him and Wei Ying. Its on the coast along Sembawang where the Sungei Sampang Kiri/ longkang meets the Johor Straits. We found a nice little spot near the river mouth.



As usual the tedious and sian part about crabbing is baiting the traps. We used rotten Kunings (nasi lemak fish) which were repulsive and nauseating. With the help of cable ties, we got the 3 cages and 2 bamboo traps up in a jiffy. We threw 2 cages and the 2 traps off the jetty nearby and one into the mouth of the river and decided to go wading. Essentially, wading is walking in the shallow water along the coast and trying to spot crabs and prawns and use a net to bag em. So with Yang on the torch and me with the net, we combed the beach but didnt really find anything except small mangrove crabs on the rocks. Gave up after 20 mins.





Then the coutdown began and we ushered int he new year there along the coast. From there we witnessed tons of fireworks lighting up the sky across in Johor. Seemed like every Kampung wanted a piece of the action. Tho there was one particular area that started shooting at around 2330, trigger happy sia haha.



We tried our hands at fishing but the lines got sangkok/snared. So we abandoned that endeavor too. Now we were cold and bored. Naturally, the pyromaniac in me arose haha. Went to gather firewood and we built a nice cosy fire. kept us occupied throughout the night, going around harvesting fuel and kindling to feed the fire. Was really nice and therapeutic just poking the fire and watching the flames dance. I love starting fires haha.





Finally, our catch report. We caught a grand total of 2 flower crabs and 1 prawn. The crabs were miserable. Like the shell only 4cm in diameter. The prawn was a good size la, but not much point in cooking 1 prawn. So we played with em, and gave the prawn to the fishermen and threw the crabs back. Very responsible of us, catch and release. End of the day we concluded that Singapore's wildlife is really in a crap state. think the2 camps of anglers around us only caught one catfish and some other stuff not worth mentioning. Guess this spot is great for chilling and all but the crabbing really wasnt all that zai.