Each evening, my wife and sit out on our balcony on the 20th floor of the Riverine Condo. We often light a candle, have dinner and discuss the days’ passing. This is our time. After sunset, we see a boat and a man circling the above buoy. He usually has a head lamp on and his light reflects off the water. The buoy is there to warn boaters that rocks are present in the river. I heard they once tried to blow them up to clear the river but they only managed to blast away the surface rocks and not the deep ones. At extreme low tide, you can plainly see them as birds land and pick off the critters as they scurry over them.
I don’t know what he is catching but people tell me they are shrimp. On holidays and weekends you can see the boats during the day, like in figure two, in a line all the way from the River Bank Suites to the bridge. The most I have counted is 24 boats. When one comes close enough to our dock and I am downstairs, I often yell ” Ada makanan malam ini?” the reply is always “Ada!” (Have you caught tonights dinner? I have!) I guess they catch enough for a good shrimp meal.
Coming across an article by Tom Harrison in the July-December 1959 Sarawak Museum Journal, he wrote about fishing from Tanjong Datu (Telok Serabang) to Bako Bay (Muara Tebas). I was astounded at the different types of nets. He had 13 listed and described. On the bank of a river, one would use a kilong. It was made of bamboo had a mouth that would lead into a central trap. A jala siar was small and cast from shore to catch prawns. To catch crabs, one would use a pento which was conical and baited. The crabs would swim toward the bait and get caught in the cone end. A ranto is drift net for catching fish at sea in boat with 3-4 men. As the tide fell, a belat was stretched across the river to catch fish and prawns. This operation took up to 12 men.
Fishing with a number of hooks on a long line is called a goret if one does not use bait or a rawai if one does bait the hooks. (I must have missed something here because I can’t imagine fishing without bait) A selirin is a small net, like a pukat, that is used in small upland rivers for small fish and prawns. The fishing I am used to, a fishing line with a baited hook is called a panching. An enggian is a platform built out on the shallow part of a river and used on a rising or falling tide to catch shrimp or prawns. Jala Laut for large fish from a boat with two or three men should bring home dinner. A pukat is an inshore drag net where men on each side of the river or creek drag the net to catch schools of fish. More my style is shelling where one collects shellfish along the shore line with their hands or a probe. As a kid we would go clamming where by we would twist our feet into the soft sand in waist deep water and when we felt the hard clam we would bend down and pick them up. My female cousins used to put the clams in their bathing suit tops that made them have three breasts. My Uncle got so mad !
I don’t know if there terms are still used or if these types of fishing still exist but they are part of the heritage of the Sarawak River Valley.
Our book “Sarawak River Valley Early Times to 1840” is available as an e-book on Amazon.com or Lulu.com
