Sporting a gleaming golden hue, stark black vertical stripes, and a conspicuous black mark framed in bright yellow on its tail like the peacock, the fish has won a regal name for itself in our local tongue. Its Malay name is ikan raja, while its Chinese name is wang ti yue (literally, “emperor fish”).

With this monster, Boon Cheng gets life membership to the Peacock Bass Hall of Fame.

It is a delectable fish. Its firm, white flesh compares well with saltwater favourites like the tenggiri (Spanish mackerel), bawal hitam (Black pomfret) and kurau (Threadfin salmon).

This is the sort of fish to fry. Or to make curry or asam pedas. Any attempt to steam it would result in an unhappy culinary adventure, for the fish is a speedy hunter that runs down its prey and it is, therefore, a muscular thing, low in juicy body fat. Being a carnivore, it is a difficult fish to farm.

Lake Kenneth

The hands-down, most popular place to catch the fish is in Perak. Specifically, in the ex-mining lakes of the state where the fish thrives. A well-known ex-mining lake to catch the Peacock Bass is in the general area of Air Kuning, not far from Tapah.

The lake has no official name of its own and is known informally to the sports fishing community as Lake Kenneth, in honour of one gentleman angler called Kenneth who helped spread the word about the lake.

Jubilantly hugging a 8.87kg giant snakehead.

Getting to the lake involves driving with 4WD vehicles across more than 20km of uneven, at times flooded, ex-mining terrain. Thus, the lake is far from human civilisation. Once badly scarred by tin mining activities, Lake Kenneth is now part of a naturalised, lush wetland system spanning over 200ha.

Viewed from Google Earth’s satellite images, Lake Kenneth exceeds 40ha in size. The rest of the wetland system comprises narrow canals, meandering channels, and weedy marshes. The system is also connected to the Kinta River, bringing with it a wide variety of fish species.

Over the years, sports anglers who make almost weekly pilgrimages to the lake have put fancy names to the fishing spots, such as Peacock Point, The Hideout, Toman Bay and Haruan Hole.

All in all, Lake Kenneth is a freshwater sports fishing haven, rich in Peacock Bass, Giant Snakehead (toman) and the Striated Snakehead (haruan).

Catching the Peacock Bass

Catching the Peacock Bass is not a simple matter of baiting a hook. The fish is drawn to schooling minnows. Here is where their brilliant colour becomes an offensive tool.

The Peacock Bass uses speed and its brilliance to thwart and dazzle a school of fish into chaos. Working as a team, a pack of Peacock Bass dart around a school of fish, bunching them together, preferably pushing them to the surface. When the prey becomes confused, the Peacock Bass picks them off one by one.

Juheni Omar, 28 and daughters Ratana (left) and Ariya out for a paddle on a Boogeese X'plorer.

They lunge at their prey with jaw-dropping dexterity.

The best way to catch them is to patrol the water in search of schools of baitfish darting around just below the surface for seemingly no apparent reason. Managing live bait while searching long stretches of water can be difficult, so the stock method for Peacock Bass fishing is to use lures.

The standard fishing lure is a thing of plastic, wood or metal that is shaped and coloured exactly like a fish and comes attached with hooks. When the lure is in motion, it will appear to swim like a fish — many in exaggerated wobbles like injured baitfish.

Since these hunters roam so widely, you need patience and a good eye to find them. Some means of moving on the water would help too. A boat and an engine would be conventional, but not optimal, because the drone of the engine can spook a hunting party of Peacock Bass.

A more effective method that is becoming popular in Malaysia is to use sit-on-top fishing kayaks. Sleek and light, the kayak is mobile and stealthy.

Traditional sit-in kayaks have openings in the middle for paddlers to snuggle into that leaves them visible only from the waist up. These are great for long distance paddling or white-water tussling.

Sit-on-tops are different.

Moulded from plastic, these allow fishers to sit on top of the water craft, granting them a greater degree of comfort and mobility. They allow anglers to roam about with relative ease compared to rowing a boat.

The following is a personal account of kayak fisher Arnold J. S. Loh, 37, who has been fishing Lake Kenneth almost weekly for two years:

The past week, the daily downpour had drummed down to a forgiving drizzle.

Lake Kenneth’s waters would have dropped a little. The Peacock Bass would have just left the grass-choked shallows and could be mulling about in the open. So the next morning, I found myself standing on the banks of Lake Kenneth.

Before I had time to unload my gear, a pack of Peacock Bass was busting baitfish in the water right beside my car! I hurriedly tied on a pencil lure, designed to flit across the water surface on a fast retrieve. They gave chase immediately. Two, sometimes three, V-shaped wakes tailed behind my lure as I skittered it back to me.

But they would not bite! Must change the lure. I picked a lure that would still play on top, but would sink the moment I stopped retrieving. They gave chase again. I slowed down the retrieve but kept the lure flitting on the surface. The predators closed in a little more. Then I stopped. The lure wobbled meekly as it sank. And suddenly everything became tight.

A Peacock Bass gulped in the lure and turned away in a flash. The hooks firmly set. I could not crank my reel. Must loosen the drag to let the fish pull some line out. A minute later, I guided the tired fish to the bank. Table-size, a little over 1kg. Victory!

The kayak finally in the water, I paddle to a stretch of shallows near Peacock Point. The water was shielded from the breeze here. It reflected the sky like a mirror. The slightest movement of fish near the surface would show. I stopped and scanned the water for several minutes. Finally, a disturbance.

A circular patch of water about a meter in diameter began to shimmer. Baitfish were being pushed to the surface. I closed in quietly and picked a top-water lure again. The swim here was littered with underwater vegetation that would snag a diving lure.

I cast into the centre of the shimmering water and made it streak back towards me. Nothing. They must be lurking a little too deep to bother. The shimmer died off. Then, the water rippled a little ahead at the edge of a solitary lotus leaf. It was just a small swirl. If not because the distance and direction of the rise made it so easy, I would not have bothered to send my lure there.

The fish was still swirling near the surface as my lure landed centimeters beside it. I twitched the lure only twice, and pandemonium seized my world.

That single lotus leaf disappeared beneath the water as a large Peacock Bass sucked in my lure with an oddly sickening sound. As it dove away, the tightened line caught the leaf’s stem, pulling everything under. The fish swerved to the right, tearing apart large clumps of underwater weeds that rose messily to the top.

I could only hold on.

The fish was pulling my kayak around. I regained some line when the fish stalled in its confusion. As I reeled it in, the fish realised that the silhouette of my kayak was a source of danger, and pandemonium struck again.

Minutes later, the fish finally tired out and came up gleaming beneath the mid-morning sun. It was the largest Peacock Bass I had ever hooked! A male, judging by the over-developed hump on top of its head. Length: 62cm. Weight: 3.1kg. I broke my Peacock Bass record!

I decided to try a further spot called The Hideout. The 2km of paddling was invigorating after the cold drizzle. On arriving at this system of broad, meandering channels, I had to grin. All the fish were having a party. Rises everywhere. A peculiar sort of rise caught my eye in the distance near a curving stretch of weed-line. Could it be?

I drew in closer, dipping my paddle silently into the water, hugging the weed-line as closely as I could to camouflage the kayak’s silhouette. The fish, a large one, rose again in the same spot. Oh! Could it be!?

As close as I dared to go without raising an alarm, I cast hard to reach the spot. The lure only just made it. Phew. I still had on a top-water lure. This time I moved the lure in a technique called Walk-The-Dog. By cranking the reel slowly and twitching the rod at a correct tempo, the lure began to swish left and right in a clumsy and heavy fashion.

Slorrp.

I swear that was what I heard before my line went so tight that it played a whining note as it rubbed hard along the rod guides. The situation was out of my hands. The fish made a break for the middle of the channel in search of deeper water, and I was compelled to follow on my kayak! I actually became scared that I had finally caught one too many fish.

Slowly but surely, the fish got tired of towing me and showed itself. A black torpedo with a white underside draped in emerald blotches. Meet the venerable Giant Snakehead. Length, 1.1m. Weight, 8.87kg. It is, in every sense of the term, a specimen size. Now I’ve broken my Giant Snakehead record.

An old friend once said: “A bad day at fishing is always better than a good day at work.”

Well, a good day at fishing is surprisingly quiet, making us feel humble and thankful to nature. Those wishing to fish Lake Kenneth are advised to observe good fishing ethics to preserve the haven. Stick to bag limits and take no more than three fish per angler.

Release all fish under 1kg. Avoid littering. Allow common sense to prevail. Be cordial to other anglers on the lake.