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It was a few years ago when I was living in Hong Kong. I decided to move there after graduating from college. A good friend of mine was already working in Hong Kong and he convinced me to try working there as well. So I packed my bags and went to the “far east” to try something new. I started working as an English teacher. Life there was fast-paced and exciting. The nightlife was amazing and I felt like I had landed on another planet! But I soon adjusted to this exciting new lifestyle and it became a normal way of life for me. It was around this time that my inner drives and curiosity as a “born-to-fish fisherman” forced me to wonder if it was possible that Hong Kong’s busy harbor had any fish worth chasing after. I felt like I was ten years old again and I was wondering if the Toronto harbor had any fish to catch. Back then I found out that there were fish there, “why can’t they be here too?” I wondered.

Initially, finding information about fishing in Hong Kong was quite difficult due to the language barrier. I kept asking and eventually spoke to my hairdresser and he told me to go to a nearby fishing store and talk to them about fishing opportunities. He was so excited at the time because he knew that if there was a fish shop, there had to be some kind of fishing! So right after my haircut, I rushed to the local fish shop! When I walked through the doors of the store there was a large board of fishing photographs. I examined them all, I saw images of squid caught on rods and reels, GT images captured on oil rigs, snappers caught on tropical beaches and mangrove-looking areas and then I saw an image of something that looked more like my fingertips. . I saw photos of a giant fish caught at night off the city-lit shores. It looked like a bass and had spots of sea trout, the mouth of a large mouth, and the shine of a steel head. All of these characteristics were things that equaled the fish I must catch!

After seeing the fish he wanted to target, it was time to find out what he was going to need to know to catch this fish. I started trying to talk to the guys who worked at the store, especially the guy I saw on the board with all those giant fish. I carried it to the board and pointed to that awesome looking fish I was looking forward to coming into contact with. Then he replied in Cantonese “ahhh, lo yu”. So the fish on the board was called “lo yu”, but I soon realized that it was called sea bass in English. I started trying to explain how I would love to catch this thing and asked where to go. The guy looked a bit confused, but after a lot of broken English and Pictionary-style sign language, he started to pick up on my drift. Then he led me to the wall of lures and pointed out a bunch of red-headed white-bodied minnow baits. So I picked a few, but then the guy took over and suggested a few. I gladly accepted their help and came out of there with a variety of lures. The lures consisted of rattleless lipless crank baits, hardcore pencils that barely broke the surface, and a variety of minnow bait sizes from 2 to 6 inches in natural and red-headed colors in floating and sunken models.

The next day I came back with some of my rod and reel sets to see if I had the right gear to carry these things. I did a couple of rolled calcuttas with a 14 pound test on a seven foot six and a half rod, both in medium stocks. The boy looked at him and said, “Okay!” and gave me the go-ahead! I asked him where I should go and he said “Wan Chai Harbor”. My bilingual friend who was with me at the time asked him if I could go with him and his friends sometime and he said no problem, next week we will leave the store around 7:00 pm. M. $ 25 can. He said we would use this money to rent a boat. Next week it finally came and I went to the store to meet the local guys from the tackle shop! There were three boys there waiting with the same excited anxiety that he had with his tackle on his back and his rods in hand. We couldn’t speak the same language, but I had a good feeling that we could definitely bridge that gap thanks to a love of fishing. Then we all got into a taxi and headed to the port. When we got there, there was a man in a rice hat waiting in one of those junk boats you see in Bruce Lee movies. We all got on his boat and headed towards the middle of Wan Chai harbor. It took them about ten minutes to reach some parked boats. The ships were well lit, so there was a line of shadow from light to dark created by the light from the ship. The guys at the store pointed and told me to cast along the shadow line and between the docks and the boats. I was starting to like what I was beginning to understand about these fish. It was clear that these fish behave a bit like a big mouth. Before doing my first cast, I was overwhelmed by the futuristic beauty that surrounded me! It was an amazing moment, I felt like I was fishing in the movie Blade Runner !! The Hong Kong skyline at night is something to see, especially when you’re fishing in the middle of the harbor and surrounded by everything! It is really difficult to put into words, but all I can say is that I will never forget that moment and that I feel chills as I write in this very second.

After my exciting moment, I ran to the front of the boat and cast a cast alongside a giant boat with a Yo-Zuri Red Live vibrating bait. I threw it away expecting a bite but got nothing. Every cast felt like they were going to bite me. Around my 10th pitch, I threw a beautiful cast under a rope and between two boats where the lights from the boats fell on the water. As soon as I hooked up my reel I felt a heavy bully on my rod. I got into it and the thing started to shed resistance like a steel head on steroids! After a strong and strong run, a fish around 6 pounds shot out of the water like a giant little mouth! I couldn’t believe it only weighed 6 pounds, the thing struggled like you didn’t believe it! The local guys were quite impressed and amazed at how I was able to get my casts in there like that, but little did they know how long I have been fishing for bass in Canada. As the night progressed, the fishing got better and better as the tide level began to drop. Later I learned that when the water level in the port is at its highest and the tide begins to go out, that is when the fishing is best. So the new moon and full moon periods were the best. When the water and the tide are still, fishing these things is the worst, it’s like fishing in a severe cold front situation up here. As I understand it, I think the tide stirs up the water and oxygenates it to a great extent and in turn creates fish activity.

Anyway, we must have caught a score of these crazy fish between 2 and 8 pounds. I did lose a behemoth (maybe 14 pounds or so) in the 8 pound trial though with a medium light action spinning outfit. I couldn’t do anything with that light stick, the fish just took off and broke me around a pile. I put that reed down for the night and stuck with my heavier action bass reeds. As we headed into the evening, we made one last stop along a ship that was a restaurant park on the shore of the harbor. Light was coming out of this boat too, the guy from the store threw a pencil bait next to the boat and nailed a nicer one about ten pounds. People on the boat who were eating were cheering, it was hilarious! We didn’t catch anything after that and the tide was pretty calm at the time so we decided to head back. Boy oh boy I was happy, that was the best $ 25 I ever spent!

As for the rest of my days in Hong Kong, I found that there were many other places to fish.

shore at night. Any well-lit part of the harbor front that also had shade was becoming obvious to me that the fish could contain. I fished all over the city and caught many giants in the twenty pound range !!! To my surprise, very few people were fishing these beautiful creatures, I know that in Japan the fishermen would have taken this opportunity. When I met other fishermen, they were only really fishing for food and not so much for sport. I was surprised that most of them didn’t believe in decoys and seemed amazed when I put something artificial on them. How big Hong Kong’s population is and how small the population that actually goes fishing remains a mystery. They do not know what they lose! Seabass is still one of my favorite fish to catch. Who wouldn’t want to catch a fish that acts like a big mouth, fights like a steel head on steroids, and jumps like a small mouth! I can’t wait to go to other cities around the world to find out what other urban gems lurk beneath the surface!