A story about Soon Hock Fish...

Soon Hock Fish or Marbled Goby is one of the high-end fresh water fishes luxurious diners seldom miss in the local restaurants.

Interestingly, it was the fish that had provided our family with some supplemental incomes during my teen days. During those days, my brothers and I employed many different fishing techniques such as fishing lines, casting nets and even some self-made one-way fish traps to catch, capture and trap the Soon Hocks.

This fish has a unique behaviour not known to many, especially during late night. It seemed to enjoy coming to some shallow ends of the shore where the water level is about ankle-deep. We would usually shine a torch into the water as we walked gently and softly along the shoreline in the night. I believe we never missed catching it when we saw one because it meant so much to us. We knew it when we saw it because we had somehow developed sharp eyes for it.

The special thing about Soon Hocks we caught was that we had to sell them alive. So, we had to put them into a covered pail or plastic bag with water and brought them all the way to town the following day and sold to a regular restaurant that would always bought from us with a reasonably good price. Even in the 1970s, it was already fetching a good price as far as we were concerned.

We were so thrilled and felt so good when we got paid and would immediately rush home to hand over the proceeds to our mother to be used for household expenses.