🕷️ Crawler Inspector

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Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 84 (from laksa132)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa084.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/othersports/04outdoors.html\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/othersports/04outdoors.html\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/04\/sports\/othersports\/04outdoors.html","crawl_time":1774588059,"first_indexed_time":1509924133,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,nytimes!www,\/2009\/03\/04\/sports\/othersports\/04outdoors.html s443","src_root_hash":"4566504020376537684","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Fishing in Singapore for an Anti-Singapore Fish - The New York Times","meta_descriptions":["The peacock bass is a brawling bar-fighter of a fish, a foreign invader misfit with bad table manners in the well-ordered Singaporean melting pot."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Advertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\nMarch 3, 2009\nSINGAPORE  “Singapore has to be the worst place in the world for fishing,” said Jerry Tay, minutes after he introduced himself on the fishing dock. He then pulled out his digital camera and proceeded to show me a slide show of huge peacock bass caught in the Singapore reservoirs.\nTay approached me as I was making my first few casts at the government-approved fishing spot on Bedok Reservoir. Fishing is permitted from only one place, a long wooden dock. The water was as clear as the Tiger Beer I had been drinking all week, and two boys were already tossing out hooks baited with shrimp on a cheap spinning rod.\nI was after the peacock bass because it represents everything Singapore is not. It is a brawling bar-fighter of a fish, a foreign invader misfit with bad table manners in the well-ordered Singaporean melting pot. The government may dictate natural order by landscaping the city-state as a well-tended but very unwild suburban park, but it cannot control the underwater jungle of the reservoir ecosystem. There, the peacock bass is the predator king.\nFor the adventure-starved populace of Singapore afflicted with nature-deficit disorder, chasing peacock bass is the best game in town.\nTay was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a tackle pack slung across his torso and armed with a stout G. Loomis bait-casting rod. He kept one eye on my casts and another eye on the surface of the water.\nHe 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.\n“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.”\nI remembered the stink from some peacock bass I had caught a few days earlier, but I thought their stink was not any worse than, say, a carp from the Mississippi River.\nTay held them in high regard as a game fish. The peacock bass, or P.B.’s, as the locals call them, are more aggressive than the fearsome toman, or snakehead, which is a toothy predator fish that can grow as long as your leg. When the snakeheads protect their schools of juvenile fry, the bass mercilessly swim circles around them and decimate their offspring. In the local Mandarin dialect, the peacock bass is called the emperor fish because it has a yellow tint, and yellow is a color for royalty; and for the single-spotted tail, which symbolizes the stamped seal of a king.\nHe said the peacock bass (the butterfly strain, cichla ocellaris) were stocked by “some wiseguy” years ago and the population took off; however, angling in the reservoirs was not allowed at the time. When the ban was lifted, fishing was allowed only at designated points, as it still is today. There are no catch limits, size limits, fishing licenses or angling rules of any kind  other than the stipulation that you must fish from the exact spot the government tells you to fish from.\nAs we fished, Tay apprised me of the social structure of the Singaporean angling scene.\nLure fishermen were the middle rung. They fished with spinning and bait-casting outfits and used artificial lures and mostly practiced catch and release. Fly anglers also practiced catch and release, he said, but tended to look down on the lure fishermen. The snobbery was a big problem, and they thought of themselves as angling elitists.\nHowever, both groups, he said, were united in deep hatred for bait fishermen.\n“Everyone is against the baiters,” Tay said. “They come out at night and they throw nothing back. They kill everything.”\nThe government does not support recreational fishing, he said: “There’s no industry, no money in it, so they don’t encourage it.”\nHowever, 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.\nThose 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.\n“If a fisherman finds a good spot, they are extremely secretive about it,” he said, citing a universal angling code.\nWhile we were talking and not paying close attention to our lines, Tay nonchalantly reeled in his lure, and there was a splash on the water. He missed a strike.\n“This is always how it happens,” he said with a sigh.\nRelated Content\nEditors’ Picks\nVisual China Group, via Getty Images\nMiguel Porlan\nTrending in The Times\nImage by Project CETI\nTailyr Irvine for The New York Times\nHiroko Masuike\/The New York Times\nDavid Degner for The New York Times\nChristopher Warren for The New York Times\nDave Sanders for The New York Times\nArmando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.\nAvishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times\nAdvertisement\nSKIP ADVERTISEMENT","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to content](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/04\/sports\/othersports\/04outdoors.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/04\/sports\/othersports\/04outdoors.html#site-index)\n\nSearch & Section Navigation\n\nSection Navigation\n\nSearch\n\n[More Sports](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/pages\/sports\/other\/index.html)\n\n[Log in](https:\/\/myaccount.nytimes.com\/auth\/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2009%252F03%252F04%252Fsports%252Fothersports%252F04outdoors.html&asset=masthead)\n\nFriday, March 27, 2026\n\n[Today’s Paper](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/todayspaper)\n\n[More Sports](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/pages\/sports\/other\/index.html)\\|Fishing in Singapore for an Anti-Singapore Fish\n\nhttps:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/04\/sports\/othersports\/04outdoors.html\n\n- Share full article\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/04\/sports\/othersports\/04outdoors.html#after-top)\n\nSupported by\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/04\/sports\/othersports\/04outdoors.html#after-sponsor)\n# Fishing in Singapore for an Anti-Singapore Fish\n- Share full article\n\nBy James Card\n\n- March 3, 2009\n\nSINGAPORE  “Singapore has to be the worst place in the world for fishing,” said Jerry Tay, minutes after he introduced himself on the fishing dock. He then pulled out his digital camera and proceeded to show me a slide show of huge peacock bass caught in the Singapore reservoirs.\n\nTay approached me as I was making my first few casts at the government-approved fishing spot on Bedok Reservoir. Fishing is permitted from only one place, a long wooden dock. The water was as clear as the Tiger Beer I had been drinking all week, and two boys were already tossing out hooks baited with shrimp on a cheap spinning rod.\n\nI was after the peacock bass because it represents everything Singapore is not. It is a brawling bar-fighter of a fish, a foreign invader misfit with bad table manners in the well-ordered Singaporean melting pot. The government may dictate natural order by landscaping the city-state as a well-tended but very unwild suburban park, but it cannot control the underwater jungle of the reservoir ecosystem. There, the peacock bass is the predator king.\n\nFor the adventure-starved populace of Singapore afflicted with nature-deficit disorder, chasing peacock bass is the best game in town.\n\nTay was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a tackle pack slung across his torso and armed with a stout G. Loomis bait-casting rod. He kept one eye on my casts and another eye on the surface of the water.\n\nHe 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.\n\n“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.”\n\nI remembered the stink from some peacock bass I had caught a few days earlier, but I thought their stink was not any worse than, say, a carp from the Mississippi River.\n\nTay held them in high regard as a game fish. The peacock bass, or P.B.’s, as the locals call them, are more aggressive than the fearsome toman, or snakehead, which is a toothy predator fish that can grow as long as your leg. When the snakeheads protect their schools of juvenile fry, the bass mercilessly swim circles around them and decimate their offspring. In the local Mandarin dialect, the peacock bass is called the emperor fish because it has a yellow tint, and yellow is a color for royalty; and for the single-spotted tail, which symbolizes the stamped seal of a king.\n\n## Editors’ Picks\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/23\/multimedia\/23bts-review-bhmk\/23bts-review-bhmk-thumbLarge.jpg)BTS Is Too Big to Fail. But Not Too Big to Succeed.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/23\/arts\/music\/bts-arirang-review.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/23\/well\/WELL-COLLAGEN1\/WELL-COLLAGEN1-thumbLarge.jpg)Can Collagen Really Do All That?](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/24\/well\/collagen-supplements-benefits.html)\n\n[![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/02\/insider\/Final-colored\/Final-colored-thumbLarge-v2.png)Write It Up! How Fast Do Our Journalists Type?](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/25\/insider\/how-fast-journalists-type.html)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/04\/sports\/othersports\/04outdoors.html#after-pp_edpick)\n\nHe said the peacock bass (the butterfly strain, cichla ocellaris) were stocked by “some wiseguy” years ago and the population took off; however, angling in the reservoirs was not allowed at the time. When the ban was lifted, fishing was allowed only at designated points, as it still is today. There are no catch limits, size limits, fishing licenses or angling rules of any kind  other than the stipulation that you must fish from the exact spot the government tells you to fish from.\n\nAs we fished, Tay apprised me of the social structure of the Singaporean angling scene.\n\nLure fishermen were the middle rung. They fished with spinning and bait-casting outfits and used artificial lures and mostly practiced catch and release. Fly anglers also practiced catch and release, he said, but tended to look down on the lure fishermen. The snobbery was a big problem, and they thought of themselves as angling elitists.\n\nHowever, both groups, he said, were united in deep hatred for bait fishermen.\n\n“Everyone is against the baiters,” Tay said. “They come out at night and they throw nothing back. They kill everything.”\n\nThe government does not support recreational fishing, he said: “There’s no industry, no money in it, so they don’t encourage it.”\n\nHowever, 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.\n\nThose 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.\n\n“If a fisherman finds a good spot, they are extremely secretive about it,” he said, citing a universal angling code.\n\nWhile we were talking and not paying close attention to our lines, Tay nonchalantly reeled in his lure, and there was a splash on the water. He missed a strike.\n\n“This is always how it happens,” he said with a sigh.\n\n- Share full article\n\n## Related Content\n### Editors’ Picks\n- [Daphne Selfe, World’s Oldest Professional Model, Dies at 97](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/25\/style\/daphne-selfe-dead.html)\n  \n  ![Daphne Selfe in 2010. Her skin-care and diet regimen, she said, included “Nivea, broccoli and the odd glass of champagne.”](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/27\/obituaries\/00selfe-01-print1\/00selfe-01-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Visual China Group, via Getty Images\n- [Our Youngest Child Has Cut Ties With Our Family. Help\\!](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/25\/style\/family-dysfunction-mediator.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2021\/06\/20\/fashion\/socialqs-2021-artwork\/socialqs-2021-artwork-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Miguel Porlan\n\n### Trending in The Times\n- [Scientists Filmed a Whale Birth. The Surprise: Mom Had Many Helpers.](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/26\/climate\/sperm-whale-birth-assistance.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/26\/multimedia\/26cli-whale-birth-vidcover-qvpc\/26cli-whale-birth-vidcover-qvpc-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Image by Project CETI\n- [A Film Studio Moved to Montana for Tax Breaks. Will It Benefit the Locals?](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/26\/business\/story-house-montana-economy.html)\n  \n  ![The founders of Story House moved their studio project to Missoula, Mont., from Wyoming, to take advantage of Montana’s tax credits for film and television production.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/23\/multimedia\/00biz-square-feet-storyhouse-cflm\/00biz-square-feet-storyhouse-cflm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Tailyr Irvine for The New York Times\n- [A Professional Organizer’s Guide to Spring Cleaning Your Life](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/23\/realestate\/spring-cleaning-tips-professional-organizer.html)\n  \n  ![Professional organizer Christina Fallon likes to shake up her client’s homes “like a snow globe” in order to put them back together.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/23\/multimedia\/23re-professional-organizer-fjth\/23re-professional-organizer-fjth-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Hiroko Masuike\/The New York Times\n- [Massachusetts Teacher Charged With Raping Two Students](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/24\/us\/teacher-rape-miss-halls-massachusetts.html)\n  \n  ![Matthew Rutledge, who was indicted on three counts of rape on Tuesday, taught at Miss Hall’s school in Pittsfield, Mass.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/24\/multimedia\/24nat-miss-halls-tgmk\/24nat-miss-halls-tgmk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  David Degner for The New York Times\n- [Why a Strong Butt Is Key to Healthy Aging](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video\/well\/100000010781737\/why-a-strong-butt-is-key-to-healthy-aging.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/16\/arts\/THUMBNAIL_glutes-longevity\/THUMBNAIL_glutes-longevity-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n- [Chaucer, Murder, Pilgrims: What Do You Know About Canterbury and Its Archbishops?](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2026\/03\/25\/world\/europe\/uk-canterbury-archbishop-quiz.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/25\/multimedia\/00int-uk-canterbury-quiz-pcbz\/00int-uk-canterbury-quiz-pcbz-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Christopher Warren for The New York Times\n- [Flight 8646 to LaGuardia: From Routine Landing to Disaster in 20 Seconds](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/03\/24\/nyregion\/air-canada-laguardia-crash-investigation.html)\n  \n  ![Days after the collision with a fire truck on the runway, Air Canada Flight 8646 remains on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/24\/multimedia\/24met-lga-crash-01-zbvq\/24met-lga-crash-01-zbvq-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Dave Sanders for The New York Times\n- [A Simple Trick Makes This Chicken Dinner Especially Delicious](https:\/\/cooking.nytimes.com\/article\/braised-chicken-blanching-kimchi)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/19\/multimedia\/19FD-KIM-CHICKEN-whcv\/19FD-KIM-CHICKEN-whcv-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.\n- [Iranian Missile Attack Damages Residential Buildings in Tel Aviv](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video\/world\/middleeast\/100000010797996\/iran-missile-attack-tel-aviv.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/24\/multimedia\/24vid-israel-iran-tel-aviv-COVER-lpvw\/24vid-israel-iran-tel-aviv-COVER-lpvw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times\n- [Why the Verdict Against Meta and YouTube Could Change Social Media](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/video\/technology\/100000010801833\/why-the-verdict-against-meta-and-youtube-could-change-social-media.html)\n  \n  ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/27\/arts\/THUMBNAIL\/THUMBNAIL-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/04\/sports\/othersports\/04outdoors.html#after-bottom)\n\n## Site Index\n[Go to Home Page 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Jerry Tay, minutes after he introduced himself on the fishing dock. He then pulled out his digital camera and proceeded to show me a slide show of huge peacock bass caught in the Singapore reservoirs.\n\nTay approached me as I was making my first few casts at the government-approved fishing spot on Bedok Reservoir. Fishing is permitted from only one place, a long wooden dock. The water was as clear as the Tiger Beer I had been drinking all week, and two boys were already tossing out hooks baited with shrimp on a cheap spinning rod.\n\nI was after the peacock bass because it represents everything Singapore is not. It is a brawling bar-fighter of a fish, a foreign invader misfit with bad table manners in the well-ordered Singaporean melting pot. The government may dictate natural order by landscaping the city-state as a well-tended but very unwild suburban park, but it cannot control the underwater jungle of the reservoir ecosystem. There, the peacock bass is the predator king.\n\nFor the adventure-starved populace of Singapore afflicted with nature-deficit disorder, chasing peacock bass is the best game in town.\n\nTay was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a tackle pack slung across his torso and armed with a stout G. Loomis bait-casting rod. He kept one eye on my casts and another eye on the surface of the water.\n\nHe 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.\n\n“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.”\n\nI remembered the stink from some peacock bass I had caught a few days earlier, but I thought their stink was not any worse than, say, a carp from the Mississippi River.\n\nTay held them in high regard as a game fish. The peacock bass, or P.B.’s, as the locals call them, are more aggressive than the fearsome toman, or snakehead, which is a toothy predator fish that can grow as long as your leg. When the snakeheads protect their schools of juvenile fry, the bass mercilessly swim circles around them and decimate their offspring. In the local Mandarin dialect, the peacock bass is called the emperor fish because it has a yellow tint, and yellow is a color for royalty; and for the single-spotted tail, which symbolizes the stamped seal of a king.\n\nHe said the peacock bass (the butterfly strain, cichla ocellaris) were stocked by “some wiseguy” years ago and the population took off; however, angling in the reservoirs was not allowed at the time. When the ban was lifted, fishing was allowed only at designated points, as it still is today. There are no catch limits, size limits, fishing licenses or angling rules of any kind  other than the stipulation that you must fish from the exact spot the government tells you to fish from.\n\nAs we fished, Tay apprised me of the social structure of the Singaporean angling scene.\n\nLure fishermen were the middle rung. They fished with spinning and bait-casting outfits and used artificial lures and mostly practiced catch and release. Fly anglers also practiced catch and release, he said, but tended to look down on the lure fishermen. The snobbery was a big problem, and they thought of themselves as angling elitists.\n\nHowever, both groups, he said, were united in deep hatred for bait fishermen.\n\n“Everyone is against the baiters,” Tay said. “They come out at night and they throw nothing back. They kill everything.”\n\nThe government does not support recreational fishing, he said: “There’s no industry, no money in it, so they don’t encourage it.”\n\nHowever, 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.\n\nThose 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.\n\n“If a fisherman finds a good spot, they are extremely secretive about it,” he said, citing a universal angling code.\n\nWhile we were talking and not paying close attention to our lines, Tay nonchalantly reeled in his lure, and there was a splash on the water. He missed a strike.\n\n“This is always how it happens,” he said with a sigh.\n\n## Related Content\nEditors’ Picks\n\n- ![Daphne Selfe in 2010. Her skin-care and diet regimen, she said, included “Nivea, broccoli and the odd glass of champagne.”](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/27\/obituaries\/00selfe-01-print1\/00selfe-01-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Visual China Group, via Getty Images\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2021\/06\/20\/fashion\/socialqs-2021-artwork\/socialqs-2021-artwork-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)\n  \n  Miguel Porlan\n\nTrending in The Times\n\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/26\/multimedia\/26cli-whale-birth-vidcover-qvpc\/26cli-whale-birth-vidcover-qvpc-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Image by Project CETI\n- ![The founders of Story House moved their studio project to Missoula, Mont., from Wyoming, to take advantage of Montana’s tax credits for film and television production.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/23\/multimedia\/00biz-square-feet-storyhouse-cflm\/00biz-square-feet-storyhouse-cflm-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Tailyr Irvine for The New York Times\n- ![Professional organizer Christina Fallon likes to shake up her client’s homes “like a snow globe” in order to put them back together.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/23\/multimedia\/23re-professional-organizer-fjth\/23re-professional-organizer-fjth-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Hiroko Masuike\/The New York Times\n- ![Matthew Rutledge, who was indicted on three counts of rape on Tuesday, taught at Miss Hall’s school in Pittsfield, Mass.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/24\/multimedia\/24nat-miss-halls-tgmk\/24nat-miss-halls-tgmk-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  David Degner for The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/16\/arts\/THUMBNAIL_glutes-longevity\/THUMBNAIL_glutes-longevity-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/25\/multimedia\/00int-uk-canterbury-quiz-pcbz\/00int-uk-canterbury-quiz-pcbz-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Christopher Warren for The New York Times\n- ![Days after the collision with a fire truck on the runway, Air Canada Flight 8646 remains on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport.](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/24\/multimedia\/24met-lga-crash-01-zbvq\/24met-lga-crash-01-zbvq-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Dave Sanders for The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/19\/multimedia\/19FD-KIM-CHICKEN-whcv\/19FD-KIM-CHICKEN-whcv-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/24\/multimedia\/24vid-israel-iran-tel-aviv-COVER-lpvw\/24vid-israel-iran-tel-aviv-COVER-lpvw-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n  \n  Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times\n- ![](https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/03\/27\/arts\/THUMBNAIL\/THUMBNAIL-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale&width=350)\n\nAdvertisement\n\n[SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/04\/sports\/othersports\/04outdoors.html#after-bottom)","meta_canonical":null}

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Boilerpipe Text	Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT March 3, 2009 SINGAPORE “Singapore has to be the worst place in the world for fishing,” said Jerry Tay, minutes after he introduced himself on the fishing dock. He then pulled out his digital camera and proceeded to show me a slide show of huge peacock bass caught in the Singapore reservoirs. Tay approached me as I was making my first few casts at the government-approved fishing spot on Bedok Reservoir. Fishing is permitted from only one place, a long wooden dock. The water was as clear as the Tiger Beer I had been drinking all week, and two boys were already tossing out hooks baited with shrimp on a cheap spinning rod. I was after the peacock bass because it represents everything Singapore is not. It is a brawling bar-fighter of a fish, a foreign invader misfit with bad table manners in the well-ordered Singaporean melting pot. The government may dictate natural order by landscaping the city-state as a well-tended but very unwild suburban park, but it cannot control the underwater jungle of the reservoir ecosystem. There, the peacock bass is the predator king. For the adventure-starved populace of Singapore afflicted with nature-deficit disorder, chasing peacock bass is the best game in town. Tay was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a tackle pack slung across his torso and armed with a stout G. Loomis bait-casting rod. He kept one eye on my casts and another eye on the surface of the water. 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.” I remembered the stink from some peacock bass I had caught a few days earlier, but I thought their stink was not any worse than, say, a carp from the Mississippi River. Tay held them in high regard as a game fish. The peacock bass, or P.B.’s, as the locals call them, are more aggressive than the fearsome toman, or snakehead, which is a toothy predator fish that can grow as long as your leg. When the snakeheads protect their schools of juvenile fry, the bass mercilessly swim circles around them and decimate their offspring. In the local Mandarin dialect, the peacock bass is called the emperor fish because it has a yellow tint, and yellow is a color for royalty; and for the single-spotted tail, which symbolizes the stamped seal of a king. He said the peacock bass (the butterfly strain, cichla ocellaris) were stocked by “some wiseguy” years ago and the population took off; however, angling in the reservoirs was not allowed at the time. When the ban was lifted, fishing was allowed only at designated points, as it still is today. There are no catch limits, size limits, fishing licenses or angling rules of any kind other than the stipulation that you must fish from the exact spot the government tells you to fish from. As we fished, Tay apprised me of the social structure of the Singaporean angling scene. Lure fishermen were the middle rung. They fished with spinning and bait-casting outfits and used artificial lures and mostly practiced catch and release. Fly anglers also practiced catch and release, he said, but tended to look down on the lure fishermen. The snobbery was a big problem, and they thought of themselves as angling elitists. However, both groups, he said, were united in deep hatred for bait fishermen. “Everyone is against the baiters,” Tay said. “They come out at night and they throw nothing back. They kill everything.” The government does not support recreational fishing, he said: “There’s no industry, no money in it, so they don’t encourage it.” 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. “If a fisherman finds a good spot, they are extremely secretive about it,” he said, citing a universal angling code. While we were talking and not paying close attention to our lines, Tay nonchalantly reeled in his lure, and there was a splash on the water. He missed a strike. “This is always how it happens,” he said with a sigh. Related Content Editors’ Picks Visual China Group, via Getty Images Miguel Porlan Trending in The Times Image by Project CETI Tailyr Irvine for The New York Times Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times David Degner for The New York Times Christopher Warren for The New York Times Dave Sanders for The New York Times Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Markdown	[Skip to content](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/othersports/04outdoors.html#site-content)[Skip to site index](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/othersports/04outdoors.html#site-index) Search & Section Navigation Section Navigation Search [More Sports](https://www.nytimes.com/pages/sports/other/index.html) [Log in](https://myaccount.nytimes.com/auth/login?response_type=cookie&client_id=vi&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2Fsubscription%2Fonboarding-offer%3FcampaignId%3D7JFJX%26EXIT_URI%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.nytimes.com%252F2009%252F03%252F04%252Fsports%252Fothersports%252F04outdoors.html&asset=masthead) Friday, March 27, 2026 [Today’s Paper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper) [More Sports](https://www.nytimes.com/pages/sports/other/index.html)\\|Fishing in Singapore for an Anti-Singapore Fish https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/othersports/04outdoors.html - Share full article Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/othersports/04outdoors.html#after-top) Supported by [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/othersports/04outdoors.html#after-sponsor) # Fishing in Singapore for an Anti-Singapore Fish - Share full article By James Card - March 3, 2009 SINGAPORE “Singapore has to be the worst place in the world for fishing,” said Jerry Tay, minutes after he introduced himself on the fishing dock. He then pulled out his digital camera and proceeded to show me a slide show of huge peacock bass caught in the Singapore reservoirs. Tay approached me as I was making my first few casts at the government-approved fishing spot on Bedok Reservoir. Fishing is permitted from only one place, a long wooden dock. The water was as clear as the Tiger Beer I had been drinking all week, and two boys were already tossing out hooks baited with shrimp on a cheap spinning rod. I was after the peacock bass because it represents everything Singapore is not. It is a brawling bar-fighter of a fish, a foreign invader misfit with bad table manners in the well-ordered Singaporean melting pot. The government may dictate natural order by landscaping the city-state as a well-tended but very unwild suburban park, but it cannot control the underwater jungle of the reservoir ecosystem. There, the peacock bass is the predator king. For the adventure-starved populace of Singapore afflicted with nature-deficit disorder, chasing peacock bass is the best game in town. Tay was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a tackle pack slung across his torso and armed with a stout G. Loomis bait-casting rod. He kept one eye on my casts and another eye on the surface of the water. 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.” I remembered the stink from some peacock bass I had caught a few days earlier, but I thought their stink was not any worse than, say, a carp from the Mississippi River. Tay held them in high regard as a game fish. The peacock bass, or P.B.’s, as the locals call them, are more aggressive than the fearsome toman, or snakehead, which is a toothy predator fish that can grow as long as your leg. When the snakeheads protect their schools of juvenile fry, the bass mercilessly swim circles around them and decimate their offspring. In the local Mandarin dialect, the peacock bass is called the emperor fish because it has a yellow tint, and yellow is a color for royalty; and for the single-spotted tail, which symbolizes the stamped seal of a king. ## Editors’ Picks [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/23/multimedia/23bts-review-bhmk/23bts-review-bhmk-thumbLarge.jpg)BTS Is Too Big to Fail. But Not Too Big to Succeed.](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/arts/music/bts-arirang-review.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/23/well/WELL-COLLAGEN1/WELL-COLLAGEN1-thumbLarge.jpg)Can Collagen Really Do All That?](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/well/collagen-supplements-benefits.html) [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/02/insider/Final-colored/Final-colored-thumbLarge-v2.png)Write It Up! How Fast Do Our Journalists Type?](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/insider/how-fast-journalists-type.html) Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/othersports/04outdoors.html#after-pp_edpick) He said the peacock bass (the butterfly strain, cichla ocellaris) were stocked by “some wiseguy” years ago and the population took off; however, angling in the reservoirs was not allowed at the time. When the ban was lifted, fishing was allowed only at designated points, as it still is today. There are no catch limits, size limits, fishing licenses or angling rules of any kind other than the stipulation that you must fish from the exact spot the government tells you to fish from. As we fished, Tay apprised me of the social structure of the Singaporean angling scene. Lure fishermen were the middle rung. They fished with spinning and bait-casting outfits and used artificial lures and mostly practiced catch and release. Fly anglers also practiced catch and release, he said, but tended to look down on the lure fishermen. The snobbery was a big problem, and they thought of themselves as angling elitists. However, both groups, he said, were united in deep hatred for bait fishermen. “Everyone is against the baiters,” Tay said. “They come out at night and they throw nothing back. They kill everything.” The government does not support recreational fishing, he said: “There’s no industry, no money in it, so they don’t encourage it.” 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. “If a fisherman finds a good spot, they are extremely secretive about it,” he said, citing a universal angling code. While we were talking and not paying close attention to our lines, Tay nonchalantly reeled in his lure, and there was a splash on the water. He missed a strike. “This is always how it happens,” he said with a sigh. - Share full article ## Related Content ### Editors’ Picks - [Daphne Selfe, World’s Oldest Professional Model, Dies at 97](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/style/daphne-selfe-dead.html) ![Daphne Selfe in 2010. Her skin-care and diet regimen, she said, included “Nivea, broccoli and the odd glass of champagne.”](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2026/03/27/obituaries/00selfe-01-print1/00selfe-01-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) Visual China Group, via Getty Images - [Our Youngest Child Has Cut Ties With Our Family. 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Readable Markdown	Advertisement [SKIP ADVERTISEMENT](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/sports/othersports/04outdoors.html#after-top) - March 3, 2009 SINGAPORE “Singapore has to be the worst place in the world for fishing,” said Jerry Tay, minutes after he introduced himself on the fishing dock. He then pulled out his digital camera and proceeded to show me a slide show of huge peacock bass caught in the Singapore reservoirs. Tay approached me as I was making my first few casts at the government-approved fishing spot on Bedok Reservoir. Fishing is permitted from only one place, a long wooden dock. The water was as clear as the Tiger Beer I had been drinking all week, and two boys were already tossing out hooks baited with shrimp on a cheap spinning rod. I was after the peacock bass because it represents everything Singapore is not. It is a brawling bar-fighter of a fish, a foreign invader misfit with bad table manners in the well-ordered Singaporean melting pot. The government may dictate natural order by landscaping the city-state as a well-tended but very unwild suburban park, but it cannot control the underwater jungle of the reservoir ecosystem. There, the peacock bass is the predator king. For the adventure-starved populace of Singapore afflicted with nature-deficit disorder, chasing peacock bass is the best game in town. Tay was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a tackle pack slung across his torso and armed with a stout G. Loomis bait-casting rod. He kept one eye on my casts and another eye on the surface of the water. 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.” I remembered the stink from some peacock bass I had caught a few days earlier, but I thought their stink was not any worse than, say, a carp from the Mississippi River. Tay held them in high regard as a game fish. The peacock bass, or P.B.’s, as the locals call them, are more aggressive than the fearsome toman, or snakehead, which is a toothy predator fish that can grow as long as your leg. When the snakeheads protect their schools of juvenile fry, the bass mercilessly swim circles around them and decimate their offspring. In the local Mandarin dialect, the peacock bass is called the emperor fish because it has a yellow tint, and yellow is a color for royalty; and for the single-spotted tail, which symbolizes the stamped seal of a king. He said the peacock bass (the butterfly strain, cichla ocellaris) were stocked by “some wiseguy” years ago and the population took off; however, angling in the reservoirs was not allowed at the time. When the ban was lifted, fishing was allowed only at designated points, as it still is today. There are no catch limits, size limits, fishing licenses or angling rules of any kind other than the stipulation that you must fish from the exact spot the government tells you to fish from. As we fished, Tay apprised me of the social structure of the Singaporean angling scene. Lure fishermen were the middle rung. They fished with spinning and bait-casting outfits and used artificial lures and mostly practiced catch and release. Fly anglers also practiced catch and release, he said, but tended to look down on the lure fishermen. The snobbery was a big problem, and they thought of themselves as angling elitists. However, both groups, he said, were united in deep hatred for bait fishermen. “Everyone is against the baiters,” Tay said. “They come out at night and they throw nothing back. They kill everything.” The government does not support recreational fishing, he said: “There’s no industry, no money in it, so they don’t encourage it.” 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. “If a fisherman finds a good spot, they are extremely secretive about it,” he said, citing a universal angling code. While we were talking and not paying close attention to our lines, Tay nonchalantly reeled in his lure, and there was a splash on the water. He missed a strike. “This is always how it happens,” he said with a sigh. ## Related Content Editors’ Picks - ![Daphne Selfe in 2010. 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