In Pursuit of Borneo Black Bass

Photos by YH & D1

Early morning sunrise. We heard the village cocks crowing signalling time for us to rise and shine. Today, we would be in pursuit of one of the meanest, toughest and most brutal species to roam the estuaries of Borneo.

Black Bass (Lutjanus goldiei), also known as Papuan Black Snapper seemed to get a lot of world attention in Papua New Guinea but in recent years, Borneo has also began to share some of the limelight as a popular location to target the species.

The rain seemed to have followed us to Borneo and water clarity was still murky with all the silt washed down from the mountains. Today, we would head out to the rivermouth, hoping that the rising tide would bring better water clarity to the otherwise milk-coffee stained water.

Our arsenal - Rapalero Reds ready for battle

We would primarily be casting but would also troll when shifting between spots. Hence, a good spread of lures was vital to cover all options. We picked mostly Taildancers, X-Raps, Deep Shad Raps, Minnow Raps for casting on 6-12lb / 8-14lb outfits. Pretty confident that the tough built Rapalero rods would tame the fish if not easily. For trolling, deep diving X-Rap Magnums & Storm Deep Thunders were dragged along by 15-30lb outfits - no sweat against the resistance put up by the deep bibs.

We didn't move too far off from the village when KH got a nice bump on the Deep Thunder. Surprisingly, the fish didn't offer too much resistance and swam calmly against the pull of the 15-30lb outfit. Only when it sighted the boat, it took off with short powerful bursts of dogged tugs. Shortly after, it came in willingly to be lip gripped by a happy KH - his first ever Black Bass!

Over on the other boat, FG & YH were also trolling their way out towards the rivermouth when a nice fish struck FG's setup. We noticed some commotion on our end and motored over to have a closer look. By the time we approached, FG had triumphantly boga'ed the fish for pics and shouts of "YES!!!" were echoing to the air. You should have seen the look on his face!

Honestly, my first thoughts as we approached their boat was that FG had landed a huge barramundi, since it had a white body with yellow fins & tail. As we got closer to their boat, we realised it was actually a Black Bass. Nevertheless, FG was mighty pleased with his capture!

To be continued...