Crabbing trip 1

Its about 9am in the morning now and I wonder why I am up.

Perhaps its becos its christmas eve and I am always in the festive feeling.
Or it could be that I am just too excited from last night that I cant sleep properly.

Indeed many would have called me foolish to embark on a crabbing trip when I barely recovered from my flu. I coughed quite a few times throughout the night and now I have developed a deep sexy voice. Perhaps if there is any local movie out there who requires a deep male voice to voiceover the trailer, I would gladly do so for free.

Well here is how the story goes,

We met about 8-ish after buying all the stuffs we needed. Dinner was a simple Hokkien mee and some indian lamb soup (kang beng - i think). The sky was forever drizzling and my 3 other friends felt like cancelling the trip. I for once am the optimist guy, and told them that if it rains, we will have less competitions. How true would that me, since we ended up the only group crabbing.

We arrived at our secret location somewhere east of singapore. I would like to tell more but if I do so, it wont be so secret anymore. :P yes I am anal this way. There we parked our 2 vehicles and quickly set up our equipment.

Everyone had an opinion on where is the best spot to catch those nasty crabs. Which is why we gotten 4 traps each. The bait of the day was Stingray meat. Yummy. Ah Siang (no kidding thats his real name) got them from the market this morning and declared them smelly enough. The other 2 agreed except for me whose sickness came in handy to mask out any smell. Initially I wanted him to get them at least 2 days in advance to boost its delightful aroma, but sigh.... it was not to be.

We placed all our traps with the munchy baits and I ended up tying everyone of them. Somehow when it comes to tying or cutting or burning it always had to be me. The scout one. Listening to each one instruction I too ended up laying the traps for them at different location. sheesh.

After the last trap was laid, we took a quick sip from our store of drinks. We decided that we would tried to catch at least 5-6 palm sized once tonight. Those little ones which are in their teens, will be told to stay home and not to hang out so late among the bad company.

Soon we walked back to our traps and pull up each one to check. 2/4 of them were found with little crabs. Sensing the excitment, we quickly gathered together to fish them out with the pilers Bernard brought. It aint easy. These little critters just wont leave the net without a fight. But we soon learned how to do it easily and gotten all into our box which Chuan provided.

Thinking that we found their hotspot, we moved the other 2 traps nearer to the luckier 2 and waited some more. Perhaps its our foolishness, for every 10 minutes we would pull up and checked and be disappointed. The hotspot was cold for the next hour so it seems.

Tired, we retreated to sitting down on the cardboard seats we made and chatted for a long while. An hour pass before we returned to check our stations. Almost all 4 of them contains a crab or more. The tension is crazy.

We then decided that we should just leave it there for at least 30 mins before checking. With the current slowly coming in, I got a good feeling about this. 30 mins later, I pull out one and to my surprise saw a different visitor. Its a pinkish color catfish. Now I wonder why would it be caught in our trap..... But since he aint what I was looking for, we took some crazy pic of him and threw him back. Goodbye little buddy.

Its quite ironic to name a fish, catfish, dun you think?

The night slowly pass us by. Chuan had to work tomorrow and ended up returning to his van to sleep. I went over to my bro and told him that we should have an early night so that he can rest. Bernard was reluctant as we had only caught 3-4 which are close to palm-size and none bigger. There were several teens along with their baby brother. Eventually we agreed to depart after 3.30am.

As we kept our stuffs, we decided to split the spoils among us. I only wanted to keep the tiniest one so that I could show proudly to my dada-chan. I grab one that resist a little and put him into my container (with airholes) I tried to catch another of a different variety but as I used the pincer to hold onto his big arm, the joint snapped and he became crippled by me. (I felt bad enough so dun kill me)

Thus I decided to return this one to the sea and let him live in peace. Bernard and Ah Siang placed the bigger ones into a container for their BBQ tomorrow nite. I doubt they will get much meat but I guess he wants to show his folks that he can provide for them....

I went over to Chuan's van and told him that I would be driving him back. With his daze stare he easily pass me the keys. Its been a short while since I drove a manual and once again it had to be a van or a pickup. Anyhow, we drove slowly below the 70kph limit all the way back. We did saw 2 police cars while we drove home but none of them stopped us.

When I finally rested its about 5am.

As I got up, I noticed my new little friend here aint moving no more. Ah Siang did mention while driving back that he seem to be dead. And indeed he is. Sighs



I now have no idea what to do with him. Perhaps I will sun him till he dried out of the fishy smell and displayed him on my shelf. Or I could throw him away.

I dun know yet. Need to sleep some more to wake up the other half of the brain.