Singapore’s Yellow Emperor, the Peacock Bass (Brutes amongst the planned enviro)

He asked me what kind of fly I was using and suggested something silver-colored. Holding local knowledge in high regard, I immediately snipped off the black woolly bugger I was using and tied on a chartreuse streamer with silver tinsel.

“The first time you catch a peacock bass, you will never forget it,” he said. “The smell is like a person with bad body odor. When I first smelled it, I almost wanted to puke, and you can’t get it off you.”

However, over the years, Tay has met anglers from Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America who were in Singapore to fish for peacock bass. Native to the Amazon watershed, there are only a handful of places in the world where one can pursue them outside of equatorial South America.

Those are the reasons Tay laments that Singapore is the worst place in the world for fishing even though his camera is loaded with photographs of trophy peacock bass, huge snakeheads and even tarpon (of the Indo-Pacific species, not the fabled Atlantic tarpon). He says he feels hemmed in by the catch-and-kill baiters, the absurd regulations and the lack of proper ones. He is always hunting for the next best spot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/othersports/04outdoors.html?ref=sports