Starting Freshwater Fishing (with hook and line)

Since i was small, I had always been fascinated by the fishes that swim in the river flowing through the Penang botanic gardens. And since my dad is also very interested, he always brought us to net fish in the river, and one particular species of fish that lives caught my attention, if i am not wrong its the spotted barb(Puntius binotatus?? banksi???or its not a puntius???)anyway, we chinese calls it the oh ka chiak, means black back. This fish looks very clean and smart( to me la hahaha), and man they are fast swimmers, to catch them using a net ( you hold on your hand, not the jala) is very very hard, unless by surprise but normally its the fish that zooms out of nowhere then vanishes into nowhere.(so who is surprising who??)

Only when I was older, i found out that this fish is not special at all in the aquarium trade, the workers in the aquarium refers to it as 'sampah hu' means rubbish fish. But I was still very in love with this fish, every time i walk by the stream in botanical, i will stand and look and sometimes going down to catch it. I used to think up methods and devices to catch these fishes since they were so hard to catch (when i was small la) but all didn't work.HAHA!!

About a few weeks ago, when i was walking in the garden with my family, we saw a guy fishing at the stream with tiny hook and line, and bread as bait ( he did not use rod). The penang betta was among his catch, i was suprised as i have read about it in books that there are penang bettas in the stream but never saw one and here this guy got a few, quite big those bettas. Its fun to see the fishes hesitating whether to eat the bait or not in the clear water, this is one thing you cannot see when fishing at the sea.

Since then, I wanted to try fishing this way but i had not the time to do so. And a few days ago, our family went for a short trip to Taiping, and there are several streams at the foot of bukit larut or maxwell hill, the place is very pretty, so cool but there is one thing not pretty---rubbish!!!!! really destroyed everything, not only the smell, to look at it is really an eyesore.


The rubbish pile just beside the beautiful stream


And here is my chance, we fished there for quite a while but it seems like the fishes are scared of the rod or hook or swivel or i don't know. The fishes don't even come close to the bait, but when i throw bread into the water, fihes sprung out from nowhere to collect it. I can see danios, spotted barbs, and some other kind that look like the spotted barb but with no spot and silver scales instead of gold.


My dad fishing with a rod


Maybe the line was too visible?? the hook too big?? or the rod??? this is something i will only learn through experience (or someone teach me ). Hopefully i will get fish when i fish at the streams of penang and hopefully one day i will land my first lian hu (Neolissochilus hendersoni, i think, a type of fish in the mahseer family) this fish is endemic to Penang as from what I have read.