Big game fishing in Java

From Indonesia

I had been to Jakarta on at least two previous occasions, but in each case I had never seen the city during the daytime and had spent most of the time in my hotel. Turns out I was not missing much. Jakarta has to be one of the world’s least pleasant major cities, with no significant tourist attractions, and ghastly buildings in a sprawling street layout with no discernable centre to the city. To cap it all, the sky was a uniform grey smoggy colour. Oh, and there’s the traffic too. No public transport, so massive traffic jams everywhere for much of the day. Not a place to linger in, so I decided to head off to the coast for a day’s fishing with Jim, who had flown over from KL with me for a short vacation in Indonesia.

We arranged for a car to take us on the 3+ hour journey from Jakarta to Pelabuhan Ratu, and got there for a 9am start. Our boat crew were waiting and we were soon speeding out to the prime fishing area. I did not have particularly high expectations for the expedition as I have always assumed that fishing is just a form of escapist activity, and actually catching something is not really the objective. This was just as well, as we spent the first 7 hours zigzagging about trying to find those elusive big game fish, but without even a bite. As we were heading back to port, we encountered what for me was the highlight of the day – seeing numerous pods of dolphins swimming alongside our boat and performing jumps and other stunts for our benefit. Eventually all the pods congregated into a great mass of dolphins, surrounding a shoal of tuna, and presumably feeding on them, although we couldn’t see that bit. Our crew changed the lure on the fishing lines, and soon after that, we hooked a tuna. I left it to Jim to do the reeling in as he was more into the whole fishing thing than me. Unfortunately, after doing battle with the fish, and just before it was hooked into the boat, the line broke (faulty knot according to Jim), and the tuna got away. Apparently it was a good size (the one that got away always is) and would have provided a good dinner for the two of us. So we retuned to port empty handed, through a massive tropical rain storm that left us and the crew totally soaked. To make up for our lack of luck, later that evening back in our hotel we dined on Mahi Mahi (not sure of English name), which I have never had before but has to be one of the most tasty fish around.

Today, I took the even longer journey back to Jakarta airport (the non-motorway traffic is even worse in the middle of the day), and had an uneventful flight back to KL.