Need help on haruan

41

I share your pain pacman bro! i never had luck with spinner baits! most of my haruan are on SPs or live bait.

quote:
Originally posted by pacman007
auuoooccchh!!!!

here we go again… marlin never ceases to amaze me with his SP postings. i followed most of his advice and managed to land haruans with SPs. i have no problem with SPs but i still luckless with spinnerbaits. no fish so far with SBs


= “Angler Team Mangkor” =
“Team Mangkor U4 - 2006”

“If you tell what people want to hear, they will listen.”

“Be grateful, don’t be a great fool”


Earth is NOT inherited from our ancestors BUT borrowed from our children!

42

Thakns bro marlin for the valuable info on soft plastics!! appreciate it!!

I only fish on 3 days: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

43

Those soft plastics lure Marlin posted, most of it I tried before, never caught any more the 600gms. Those stuff are good for small haruan. With spinnerbait the large ones seem to like it.

44

It’s getting pretty tough these days to catch Haruan over 600gms, whatever bait you use! I’ve caught some pretty small ones on spinnerbaits! I guess it depends upon your experience, what lures you have confidence in and especially where you fish. One bait may be no better than another in a certain set of conditions, but soft plastics are addictive and fun. I can also fish soft plastics in places even a spinnerbait can’t go, never mind a hardbody lure. I’ve caught Haruan in water so shallow a spinnerbait wouldn’t submerge! I’ve caught haruan on soft plastics in places that have more grass and vegetation than they have water. This isn’t spinnerbait country, but there are some big fish in this type of terrain. Spinnerbaits are good all round baits in less dense cover, moderate timber and open water areas and I have had some success with them for Haruan. I often add a soft plastic trailer to a spinnerbait and get the best of both worlds, but spinnerbaits are generally producing reaction strikes, while plastics can also tempt less active fish.

By far and away the most flexible way to fish for Haruan in terms of the variety of terrain that can be tackled and the way I can effectively fish a bait in a single spot for minutes at a time to tease a fish into taking makes them easily the most versatile lure you could ever use. But it doesn’t matter anyway. In the real world I rarely confine myself to a single bait or single method (see the Tasik Prima Toman on Soft Plastic’s challenge for an exception). If you prefer spinnerbaits and believe you will catch bigger fish with them, then that’s what you should use. I would too!

I would certainly disagree that soft plastics are only a small fish method, but my biggest Haruan to date was not on a soft plastic. It was actually on a topwater bait fished along the edge of a weedy margin. I have had several Haruan over a kilo on soft plastics, which isn’t much to write home about, but I have no worries I’m confining myself to the smaller fish by using soft plastics. I have caught many Toman larger than that on SP’s too and the tackle I normally use enables the fish to give a good account of themselves, but I also catch lots more Haruan on soft plastics than I do any other method, so inevitably there’s a lot of small fish mixed in. I’m happy either way.

At the end of the day, if you’re fishing effectively and showing your lures to feeding fish in the right places, you’ll catch them with whatever lure you happen to be using and I don’t think there’s a sure way of catching just the big ones. Soft plastics are just one more way of catching fish. They are convenient, versatile, cheep, deadly effective and easy to fish. You don’t have to use them to the exclusion of all else, but they are a pretty good. The thread is about help with Haruan and SP’s are certainly not the only way to go.

45

attee, wehh!!

i caught this haruan today (it is yesterday already now) using berkley paddle tail grub+weighted EWG wormhook marlin sent me, at a place named Bendang Senin. i went there quite late, and after about an hour, i turned dark and i left. caught two but the other smaller one was on katak ori…

true, i casted it far and reel it really slow, then suddenly… WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!!!

i got the Rod and Line today just wanting to watch the VCD (i don’t remember whre i put the mag, already). picked up a point or two but they show very little techniques. the narration was OK


= “Angler Team Mangkor” =
“Team Mangkor U4 - 2006”

“If you tell what people want to hear, they will listen.”

“Be grateful, don’t be a great fool”

46

Hi All.

I dont know if this is in topic, but here i go!

During the recent CWS gathering, i got a 1.2kg haruan which is still happily dwelling in my aquarium. I got it using a 7cm popper which i didnt pop at all. The minute it landed the haruan whacked the lure. Im not too sure about gender but i guess its a momma guarding her fries as the fiercest haruans that i know of are these kind.

Anyway, i decided to do a little case study on haruans just a while back. Got 2 BIG BIG frogs, and 1 small one, and waited till dark. Then, whipped out the sony cybershot which has night vision, turned off all lights, and started watching the haruan. The big frogs were jumping and swimming erraticly, and were very very active. ( the small one not yet release). The haruan was just laying in the aquarium bed, looking up at the frogs. After a few minutes, It started to rise towards the frogs. It tried to bite the frog, but when it got near, the frog started jumping endlessly and scared the haruan away. After that, the same thing happened many many times. Until a while, the frogs got tired and were just laying there. At this moment i released the small frog in, which was not so active, but nonetheless was much more active then the tired big frogs. But the minute i released the small frog, the haruan chased the frog non stop until it ended up in its mouth. But it still didnt want to touch the big frogs.
After that, i took out a small 4cm strike pro popper, took out all the hooks, attached some FC to it and left it in the aqurium. After a minute or so, the haruan came up and started to ‘investigate’ the lure. Just looking at it, and not doing anything. It was at that time that i pulled the FC to let the lure pop, and true enough the haruan striked. But after realising it was hard, it let go. Again, i repeated with a chug bug(smallest one). Nothing happened. After 4 times repeating, the 4th time the haruan just bit the lure and literally spat it out back. It was more like a, you are pissing me off, go bugger off strike!

So i think that when they are in a feeding mood, anyting goes. Big or small, all will go. When they are not, a medium/small sized lure/bait should work well. The 2 big frogs were gone when i came back an hour later. This is what i have noticed. It readily takes the smaller lures and baits, but is reluctant and takes time to take on the bigger baits, unless of course it is hungry(not in my case).

What do you guys think?

http://suresh13.multiply.com/

47

Suresh, I think it’s pretty neat to be able to do this! You’ll learn a lot from watching how fish feed and respond to certain foods. They have a massive aquarium in Bass Pro Shops where you can see how bass react to certain baits and I’ve seen a similar demo in Australia using Siakap (Barramundi). Try it with soft plastics and see how the fish responds to certain presentations. Next thing you know, you’ll be fishing in your aquarium!

Generally when the fishing is tough, it’s normal to step down in size of lure and also terminal tackle size until you can get fish to bite. Interesting observation that the fish watches the bait and will be curious even when its stationary and the instant it moves, it grabs it. This is exactly the way you can fish soft plastics. I have seen this many times with haruan where a gently worked soft plastic can have them follow the bait into open water, almost like they are curious, their noses almost touching the bait and then with a little twitch of the wrist to make the plastic dart, they grab it. You can tempt them out of their snags doing this when conditions and water clarity allow you to see them. A whole new dimension to sight fishing! It’s worth playing around with rigged plastic baits to see what they look like in the water and see what action you impart to them with your rod movements. See how they freefall when you let them drop. All this will certainly help you catch more fish.

There are many reasons why a fish eats a bait, not just out of hunger. They have no hands so they explore new things with their mouths. They may strike out of aggression as well as hunger. There’s a great thread on “The Bite of the Snakehead” in the archives. Here’s the reference;

http://www.fishing.net.my/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=5602&SearchTerms=The,Bite,of,the,snakehead

While I’m at it, here’s the Soft Plastic Challenge as well;

http://www.fishing.net.my/forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=8862&SearchTerms=The,Bite,of,the,snakehead

Stick with it Prof Pacman, the more you use plastics, the more confident you’ll get in fishing them and the better at it you’ll be. Your photographs are excellent and I think we’ve all fished drains such as these for Haruan. They are perfect for plastics! Let me see if I can use your pictures as an example of how I would tackle this kind of spot with soft plastics and what presentations I’d use.

48

way to marlin…

i can’t wait to seee


= “Angler Team Mangkor” =
“Team Mangkor U4 - 2006”

“If you tell what people want to hear, they will listen.”

“Be grateful, don’t be a great fool”

49

Bravo Suresh [:)]. I was having the same intention as yours when I first bought my toman bunga fry (2 of them) from an aquarium shop a couple of months back. To rare them up & to learn more on it’s characteristic.

It’s now 6 inches long, & I loves to see them strikes whenever I feed them.

You jump I jump, You fish I fish, You catch I release.

50

Marlin,

Most of the time I used soft plastics when fishing haruan due to weedless characteristics. Below is some of my image collection

Both using Berkley Powerbait Grub. Notice that the hook only penetrate the outer part of the mouth which minimize damage to the fish if C&R

Sometimes, I attached the weedlees grub with inline spinner in order to create more vibration/flash. The picture above was taken when I just experimented downsizing the tackle (light rod with 6lbs of line). It wass true that when downsizing, I got more strike. The only problem that time was when landing the bigger size haruan, require more skill and patient due to light tackle but more fun.

The picture above was taken when I just tried using Shad type SP. It was quiet suprise to me how effective the shad type SP to haruan.

If the srike a little bit slow, I changed to frog shape SP (Mazzy Frog MF 30)in order to initiate the bite. The only drawback is the cost of this SP more expensive than grub.

Recently, I tried Berkley Powerbait Jerk Shad. If we rig it properly, the simple twitch will move the SP left and right such as the movement of baitfish near the surface of water. Not only haruan, tarpon also interested to the lures. There were many occassion that tarpon strike the lures when I did the move but due to weedless nature, only haruan managed to hook. May be if I used jighead then the tarpon might be hooked.

51

Fantastic pictures you got there Archer !!! [:)]

You jump I jump, You fish I fish, You catch I release.

52

Nice pics Archer!

I wanted to experiment with soft plastics and see the reaction of the snakehead to it, but im scared i will kill the fish. There is no way of me retrieving the sp once the haruan strikes, unless i use a hook, which is a big NO. But the gulp should be ok rite? It is made out of edible material, so nothing should happen if the fish eats it?

http://suresh13.multiply.com/

53

Archer, fantastic! And great pictures! Great shots of the hooking style of these EWG hooks as well, primarily in the jaw with minimal damage to the fish. Doesn’t always work, but minimises those crippling eye socket hook ups.

The tarpon are “gulp” feeders, projecting their mouths and engulfing the small baits. If the hook isn’t exposed, you’ll probably miss on the strike because the whole thing is inside the huge mouth cavity and the inside of the mouth has bony plates which are hard to hook up with worm hooks mostly buried in the plastic. A jig head with exposed hook will help, but you don’t need to go too heavy with the jig head weight. One of those excellent Nitro Bream series in a 1/16, 1/24 or 1/32 size will work quite well. The head shape also gives the power bait jerk baits a more erratic and interesting action.

Suresh, you have hit on one very real advantages of SP’s. Left to themselves, fish will actually eat these things, rather than just bite them. And that’s the way they need to be fished.

54

Marlin,

Basically, the area which I do my fishing has a mix of tarpon and haruan. If the SP is rig weedless, than haruan will be easily hooked. I just get ready the SP+jighead if the tarpon become suddenly frenzy.

The only thing which I find that some type of worm hook, especially with the ‘keeper’ is not easily found in tackle shop. Because of the viscous strike of haruan, my SP is easily either get out of the hook or moving up through the line. I used recently introduced Nitro jighead but the keeper is not level with the hook point which makes my grub/worm bending

I seldom used Gulp but more on Powerbait due to extra care on Gulp SP. I also used Mister Twister Exude grub which also release a scent when touching the water. May be due to the color (bright yellow), I only get one haruan with this grub.

Next, I would like to try ‘bouncing the bottom’ technique with SP in order to find out if it works. Sometimes, I find that haruan sit in the deepest channel if the area has no structure/vegetation to hide during afternoon.

55

Bottom bouncing with SP’s is one of the presentation techniques I wanted to cover. I’m working on a long post right now.

56

Suresh,

I’m also keeping haruan in the aquarium for six month in order to study the behaviour. Mine is not big, just about 500g.

Usually, I feed it with small fish which can be bought at aquarium shops, about 20. If haruan is in angry mood or during feeding, a clear, body pattern of haruan (stripes) will be emerged. It will not chasing the small fish, more like to follow lazily and corner the small fish and when within the striking distance, it will strike very fast. I also learned that haruan did n’t eat the dead fish. It will investigate by touching with its mouth, but if no response, it will leave.

It also a pretty smart fish too. At the bottom of the aquarium, there is the a pipe structure where small fish is usually hide from haruan. The opening of the pipe structure is smaller than the size of haruan’s head. There was one time I saw the haruan tried to scare the small fish by positioning vertically its body (tail up and head down)near one on the opening. The small fish got scared, running out through opposite opening which expose to haruan strike

Your case why the haruan did not strike big frog is the same to me when I asked Mr. Suzuki from Red Hot Anglers why haruan always strike my smaller MF30 rather than MF40 Mazzy Frog. Even haruan with the scale of 1.5kg also strike my MF30. The only reason he gave to me that the common diet size of frog for that particular haruan is smaller. Furthermore, smaller baits give more confident to fish to strike compare with the big baits. The only things that we cannot stop smaller haruan to strike our baits if we only target the bigger size. For me, which practise C&R, size doesn’t matter. The only things is we wat to see if our technique can catch the fish which can be shared with others

Hopefully my information share with will be useful.

57

Marlin,

That nice!!!. Will wait your writing and hopefully can guide us the right way to do it.

58

i tried keeping haruan in my aquarium but they always try to jump out… to the extent of getting head injuries… also, they tend to make the water very dirty and slimy… in the end.. i released it back into the drain…

I only fish on 3 days: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

59

Archer,

Well said. I have kept tomans before, up till they were about 1 1/2 feet long and released them. Their behaviour is the same as you mentioned above. But what i am trying to do is to present the haruan i have with baits that we use to actually catch them. Sure, i have caught haruans on seluangs, but that was a by product of me tarponing. I dont think many people will use live fishes to catch haruan, considering the terrain the live in. What i hope to do is find out what they actually do before striking. I think by finding this out, we can improve our haruan fishing very much. Also, when they are hungry, the haruans will readily take bait that is even bigger than their mouth can handle. This i did 2 weeks back. Didnt feed the haruan for a week, (4ft tank, with 4 puyu[palm size]). After a few days, a noticed one of the puyu dissapeard and the haruans stomach bigggg!!!. The size of all the puyus are definately not even close to the size of the haruans mouth, yet it whacked it. Anyway, i am hoping to hear from your observations. It will definately help.

Marlin, im waiting for your writing!!! Eagerly waiting!

Snakehead86, i dont see a reason why haruans make the water slimy and dirty. Like arowanas, tarpons, and many other fish, their droppings are solid, unlike most cichlids, which will make the water murky in very little time. Also, based on my personal experience, if they are trying to jump out, something is wrong with your setup. I cant say what, cuz i myself have faced this problem , and after changing so many things(too many to remember), the haruan is ok now. The easiest method would be to increase the aquarium size and reduce the water level. This way, it has sufficient area to swim around, yet will not be able to hurt itself even if it tries to jump. Another word of advice, dont try to keep 2 haruans together(Especially if they were caught). The stronger one will kill the weaker one. No doubt about that. But if kept from small together, it is a totally different situation. they will only start to fight if they dont have enough to eat.

My rule of thumb for rearing haruan/toman: Make sure their stomachs are full at all times. If this is fulfilled, they will (most of the time) be peaceful towards other members in the aquarium, even if the other fishes are small enough for the haruan to eat.

Also: i tried another lure just now. Baby cima 40mm sinking minnow. As usual, took off the hooks, and attached it to some lenght of fc (this time in daylight). i let it sink right in front of the haruan. The haruan became fixated to the lure. I made extremely slight movements, and the haruan just followed along. As if it was hypnotized. But the second i made an erratic move, wham! Very interesting. Have to do much much more trials to be able to come out with someting useable to catch them. Hopefully i can study them and come out with something useful!

http://suresh13.multiply.com/

60

suresh13–>> my aquarium does not have a pump, maybe thats y the water is dirty all the time… but my aquarium is quite big.. at least 5 feet… and i keep the water level at half… i still dun understand why they keep jumping out… i keep 4 of them together last time.. coz caught from the same area… they dun really fight… but jus want freedom… so i gave them freedom la! kakaka masuk longkang jer…

I only fish on 3 days: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.