Fishing Tips with Beng & Son

Happy Vesak Day to our wonderful community of anglers!
In the spirit of this peaceful day, we reflect on the patience, mindfulness, and deep respect for nature that connects us all.
Wishing you and your families a calm, joyful, and reflective holiday both on and off the water. 🙏

Rompin 25-27 May’26

A make-up trip to Rompin for my friends and regular kakis after we had to cancel last year’s trip due to bad weather.

For some of them, it’s their maiden trip and I had to make sure the grouping was properly done so that they have an experienced IC to guide them along throughout.

Overall, we’re super thankful to be blessed with 3 days of fairly good weather which allowed us to head out far and to properly comb all our markers. To spice up the trip, we each forked up another RM100 to pool the prizes on Biggest catch (minus Cobia/ Shark/ Rays), Biggest Coral Trout, Biggest Mackie and Biggest Red Emperor.

At the end of these 3 days, Asher’s team came out tops while Kalvin and my team did fairly on-par in terms of overall CR. Congrats to the winners of the pool and everyone else on landing your bucket list catches! Pretty sure it’s worth the muscle and back aches that we will be experiencing over the next couple of days 🤣

Finally, many thanks to Samuel Liu and Rompin Siong once again for the amazing fishing experience, especially so for the first timers on board. Let’s try and do 5 boats next year 😝💪

Kalvin, Wendy, Ken, Patrick, Ching Siow, Lyndon
Asher, Pwei, Daniel, Eddie Lee, Benjamin, Nicholas
Beng, David, Vicky, John, Sam

Benglin Neo

Selamat Hari Raya Haji to all our friends and followers of the page! 🌙
Wishing you and your loved ones a blessed and meaningful Eid al-Adha. 🙂
May this special day be filled with peace, joy, and cherished moments with family.
Eid Mubarak! ❤️

Some recent catches on my size 19 SOI hooks added with lumo glitters, something I learnt from Captain Fong and still doing so for all my local offshore trips…

These glitters work on both Apollo or Running sinker rigs - have attached some pics to show how to add these glitters to your hooks, hope it helps 😉

Benglin Neo

Sedili Fishing with Ryan Fisherman

Trip 1 of 2 with Captain Ryan this year. For my kakis Edmund, Lawrence and Patrick, this was their maiden trip on board and we were thankful to be blessed with good weather throughout and a pretty decent CR too.

Recalling back, with literally dead currents encountered on the first day, most of the usual shallower markers had failed to produce any decent fishes. Hence, we decided to set sail for more than 30 nautical miles eastward into deeper waters to try our luck. The gamble paid off as we were rewarded with many decent sized Crimson snappers and giant sized Russell Snappers, some of them of 1kg ranges too.

On pelagics, boat deckie Bae landed a good sized mackerel on luring while I hooked up 2 big bonitos on 60g chrome jigs. By the end of the day, along with the continued action from bottom fishing, we had filled up more than half of the ice box on board.

The 2nd day saw us pushing further to even deeper waters and we decided to focus solely on bottom fishing to fill up the ice box. Despite encountering slower bite rates than the day prior, Ryan made up with trying even more spots to find the fishes. The effort paid off when we finally found some small schools of good eating Black-banded Amberjack (Ikan Aji Aji) and Duskytail/ Whitetail groupers. I even caught a lovely 2+kg specimen on a live kuning fish at the last spot.

We ended the fishing around 4pm as we had to travel another 1.5hrs back to the jetty. We quickly took our group CR photo and split the catches before heading over to Kota Tinggi for a well-deserved dinner.

Overall, a very rewarding return trip to Sedili waters with a good haul of bottom and pelagic specimens. Thank you Ryan and Bae for the another awesome trip! See you guys again in July!

PS: Thanks Edmund for all the lovely pictures taken throughout the trip too! 👊🫰

Edmund
Lawrence
John
Patrick
Benglin Neo

On behalf of the tech team, the admin crew, and the incredible community of fans and followers behind Fishing Tips with Beng & Son, we want to wish Beng a massive Happy Birthday! 🥳

Another year older, another year wiser (!?!?), and somehow still outfishing everyone while claiming you’re just "anyhowly fishing.” Your tips have saved countless anglers from an "ice cream" day, and your on-board humor has reached legendary heights of ridiculousness. 😆

Thank you for building a space where beginners feel at home and veterans stay on their toes. You’ve taught us all that the real catch isn't just what’s on the hook, but the friendships made and the bad jokes shared along the way. 🥰

May your lines stay tight, your knots hold firm, and your runpollos work like absolute champs. May your birthday cake be even bigger than the "planet" you hooked that managed to get away! 😜

Happy Birthday, Beng! Tight lines always. 🎂

An early birthday surprise and one to close the season 🙂

The last Tong Gas I landed was more than 4 months ago on board Seven Seas Conqueress’s OPL trip. Since then, despite constantly targeting them over the last few months in waters off Tuas, Southern and Changi, nothing came up except for some smaller 3-5kg specimens.

As such, i felt super blessed that the fish gods have granted me this last Tong as the season draws to a close given it’s already the middle of April now 😅

Organized by Benjamin, the original proposal by Captain 山猪 was just to focus on the usual bottom spots for the “table-sized” fishes. But after hearing my request, he simply replied us “如果要大狗就帶大的”, of which we happily obliged.

Recalling back, the day started pretty slow for the 3 of us as the captain out-fished everyone (again as usual). Benjamin landed a couple of nice Fingermarks and a good sized grouper while I had a disastrous start with a 5kg pufferfish 🐡, followed by a sangko (snag) immediately on the next drop. Even Eddie was zero fighter all the way until noon time. We then spent the rest of the morning filling up the live well with Selar, Tamban and my favourite TG bait - Kelong Chi (aka Cresent Grunter)

As the currents turned past 1pm, the action finally started for the 3 of us. We hit a few remote markers and over the next 2-3 hours, started hauling some wild Crimson Snappers, Grunters, more Fingermarks and a few good sized groupers.

As we had more than 10 pcs of Kelong Chi in the live well and with the winds finally dying down, the captain suggested visiting a few TG markers that have previously produced for him. At the 2nd or 3rd spot, I rigged down a 5 inch Kelong Chi on my Ranggong setup and just when I finished my 3 cranks upwards and was midway through placing the rod into the steel holder, I felt a sudden jerk on my setup and before i could even react the whole rod simply went on a nosedive! At almost maximum drag, all I could do then was just to hang on to the rod and reel and tried cranking as the 70lb braid continued peeling out… Even the rod holder was at risk of being ripped off from the boat’s metal frame by the brute force.

Thereafter came a brief moment of agony as the fish had swam into a hole and all I could do then was to keep wiping the rod up and down to disturb it to swim out. And it really did! Another 2 mins of tussle later, up came my long awaited 28 pounder! Totally exhausted but super duper stoked ✌️😬

What an awesome end to this season’s hunt! Perseverance always pays so long as you just keep trying! Thank you Captain 山猪 for another splendid day out in 2nd Link waters and also to the Asli Restaurant boss Ah Long for cutting up the TG and all the fishes for us 🫡.

Looking forward to the start of the next TG season come end of the year…

Till next trip folks! Cheers 🍻





Benjamin Chng
Eddie Lim
Benglin Neo

Return trip to Batam on Wisata Bahari 2

Following the last 2 trips in 2025, l booked this return expedition for my other bunch of kakis who have yet to try out this charter with Captain Jang.

This time round, instead of departing via Harbourfront Terminal like before, we took the first ferry out from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal to Batam Center. After a hearty breakfast and some routine shopping in Batam town, we hit the Wisata Bahari jetty at 11am and quickly set sail on a 5 hour ride to the first spot. The journey could have been shorter but then again, we were sailing towards South China Seas and right against the NE monsoon winds and waves (Aloon), hence a very wet and bumpy ride with all of us hiding inside the aircon bunk and trying to get some shuteye.

Thankfully, the first Unjam spot produced a splendid hour of Lok Jiak action with the team hauling in almost 70 pcs of reds - a stunning start to the trip! After the action slowed down, we moved on to another shipwreck marker about 4 hours away to anchor for the night. Over there, it was a night of Bludger Travelly (Bulat) action, until some of us decided not to fish anymore to grab some sleep and also to conserve the ice on board. When the currents finally died down, the Sagais started coming in and those who stayed up till dawn had a good session of Sabi-jigging, hauling in more than 20 pcs in all. Those on bottom Ranggong fishing also pulled up some nice sized Cobia and other bottom species.

For Day 2, Captain Jang’s objective was to hunt for the Ang Koli and the Red Fusilier (日本红鱼）. It was a pretty hot and tiring day for all of us, and we counted hitting more than 20 spots throughout. At every spot we tried, if we can’t land any of these 2 targeted species, we simply moved to the next one. Alongside, we landed many other bottom species, Groupers, “Ah Moi” snappers, emperors and even a good sized coral trout by Dr Chua 😀👍.

Nearing evening, we decided to anchor for Captain Jang to cook dinner and surprisingly, this spot produced one of the best jigging action we had for a long while. For starters, i was totally frustrated to burst 3 tenggiris (80g jigs) on back to back. Giving up on these mackies, I decided to join CS, HL and Daniel to target the Sagais on Sabi-jigs. Amidst the 30 over pieces of Sagais landed, I was super stoked to land a lovely Coral Trout on jig, followed by an almost 5kg Crimson Snapper, my first ever caught on jigging! Wow, never knew these giant Reds will take jigs too!

After nightfall/ dinner and as the jigging action died down, we moved to the final spot of the trip. Cutting up a huge squid we scooped up, HL and Daniel Q landed 2 nice sized Fingermark Snappers. We landed more Sagais (again), this time on Ranggong baiting before we decided to end the trip as we had already ran out of ice to hold the fishes.

We hit the jetty late morning for the usual CR photo-taking before boarding the afternoon’s ferry back to Singapore, each with a 爆桶 box of fishes 😂

Overall, despite the challenging wind and wave conditions, it was an awesome season opening trip for all of us. Thank you Captain Jang, Ragil and the crew of Wisata Bahari! See you all again the next time 🫡

Many thanks to Edmund and Dr Chua for the lovely pictures taken from the trip too🫰

Till next trip folks! Cheers 🍻

Daniel Quek
Daniel
Ching Siow
Hai Leng
John
Edmund
Dr Chua
Lyndon
Benglin Neo

Season Opening Fishing in Rompin

We secured this trip with Captain Pei back in 2025 and were anxiously monitoring the wind conditions to decide if we were to push on. Eventually when the waves information on windguru.com showed a reduction to less than 1m, we made a dash for it.

Recalling back, we still had a pretty bumpy journey out from Rompin towards Tioman as we were riding directly against the NE monsoon waves aka. “Aloon”

We spent some time at multiple Unjams searching for the mackies but just couldn’t find them at all, despite trying everything, from baiting to casting and jigging.

One of the other challenges encountered during season opening is that many of the Unjam ropes were broken off by the monsoon winds and we were hence unable to secure our boat to the floating devices. I learnt from Pei that throughout the season, the commercial fishing boats (those catching bait fishes) will progressively restore these Unjams in the months ahead.

Nearing evening, we headed for some light jigging action and Irene scored a lovely pair of Coral Trouts - Well done Irene!

Day 2 presented a full action-packed day for us all. We sailed more than 40 nautical miles northwards, gathering live baits along the journey to the fishing spots. Colin struck gold on a live Selar at the first marker with a superb Coral Trout at more than 6kg! Irene and I followed suit with some solid sized Crimson Snappers (Ang Kuay) and Gold Banded Jobfish (Ang Koli).

Maybe this is how season opening is like, the bites were fast and furious on almost everything we rigged down - from live baits to Selars on butterfly to even cut squids that we bought from the Rompin market. At some of the markers, I switched to 80gm jigging and hit some nice sized deep water “Pek-Heur” (Longnose Travelly), providing me with the adrenaline rush from jigging I so missed 😂

By the end of the day, we had almost filled up the boat’s ice box with all quality eating species, not too bad considering only the 3 of us.

Overall, despite not being able to find the mackies, we’re still very thankful for an awesome season opening trip. The overall CR did justice to the bumpy rides we had to endure throughout. Thank you Captain Pei and his “Might-Mouse”deckie Ah Mun for the excellent on-board service! See you guys again in June 🙂

💡 Would like to share a tip for Day 2 deep bottom fishing that we learnt (last picture)

- For those who like to deploy live fishes as baits, it’s advisable to use gang hooks for better hookup. This is similar to what we shared for Ranggong live bait fishing for big groupers.
- Quite a few of our catches on live fishes from this trip were caught on the secondary hook.
- Hook sizes 6/0 and 4/0 (or 5/0) are recommended for pairing.
- Otherwise for cut fish meat or squid as baits, a single 6/0 or 5/0 hook is sufficient.

Hope the above helps! Till next trip folks… Cheers 🍻

Colin Ong
Irene Ong
Benglin Neo

🌙 Reel-in the Blessings: Selamat Hari Raya! 🎣
To all our fellow anglers and followers of Fishing Tips With Beng & Son, we wish you a very Happy Hari Raya Aidilfitri!
As we celebrate this season of forgiveness and gratitude, we hope your "tackle box" of life is overflowing with joy, peace, and plenty of tight lines!
Maaf Zahir dan Batin from all of us at FTWBS. May your ketupat be plenty and your drags be screaming! 🌙✨