Rompin 2023.1 – chasing tenggiri (10-11.04.23)

The first east coast rip of the year – the season opener at Rompin. David Press had flown down from his home in Thailand to join me, Azam and Wong. Captain Heng was unable to skipper our trip, but we were well served with his crew of captain Ah-Lai and deckie Shafiq. I preparation for this trip I’d managed to find a light Shimano Grappler fast jigging rod for David, and he had already bought a Shimano Saragosa for the trip. The idea was to spend a day chasing sailfish and a day going for tenggiri &/or dorado if available. The recent catch reports were poor though, and Ah-Lai suggested trying for tenggiri on day 1.

At the first stop, to fish for bait, Shafiq told me to try jigging. First drop I was fast to a small tenggiri. A good start! A couple of drops later I picked up fish number 2. Now, Shafiq told everyone to start jigging, but it seems that the school had moved off and we didn’t have any more enquiries at that location.

We move locations and started to get a bit of interest in our lures. Suddenly, David hooked-up, his first fish jigging, first fish on his new gear and his first ever tenggiri! I was very pleased because he was new to jigging and this was the fish species that he wanted. So, we were a bit miffed when, as we were about to reset our drift after landing the fish, another boat had move in and anchored over our mark. We had to move off and search for fish once again. After a fruitless couple of hours, we got our 4^th fish of the day, Wong taking the honours with a reasonable mackerel:

Tenggiri for David & Wong

We then endured a 4 hour long blank spell, until I finally hooked up what proved to be the last fish of the day at 4.40pm. This was the best tenggiri of the day at 7lb, just over 3kg:

Tenggiri (7lbs)

Late in the afternoon, we saw a nearby boat hook-up to a sailfish, which I think was eventually lost. We spend a little time soaking a live-bait for sailfish, but had no further success for either tenggiri or mackerel!

For day 2 we decided to keep trying for mackerel, although the catch reports from the previous day were poor, including for tenggiri and were non-existent for sailfish! It was a rather subdued run offshore, with none of the anticipation and expectation that we’d had at the start of the previous day, still, one positive was the near perfect fishing conditions:

Departing Sungai Rompin

Once again, the day started off with promise – Azam hooked up a tenggiri on jig, on the first drift, to kick start his trip (he’d had a very slow day 1, losing a good fish hooked-up on live-bait):

Coral trout (l), Azam’s tenggiri (r)

But once again, the initial excitement gave way to a slow grind, going thorough the captain’s numbers trying to locate feeding fish. The next fish coming c.2.5 hours later, a plump coral trout courtesy of Ah-Lai. And that was all we had to show for the day until we spend an hour fishing for snapper – both Azam and Wong boating Russell’s snappers, with me missing fish and getting bitten of by a ‘cuda, until I finally landed a small grouper.

Wong – Russell’s Snapper

And that was the end of a very slow day, the highlight being a seafood dinner of coral trout and mackerel washed down with cold Tigers at the Rompin Baru restaurant:

Seafood Dinner

Including a treat for Wong, a Chinese delicacy of steamed coral trout:

Steamed Coral Trout