Pond-hopping has been a fixture of US bass-fishing content for the better part of a decade - hop a string of suburban or urban ponds in a single day with a small lure and tight-line setup, and see how many species you can rack up before the light goes. SinghFishing has now wrapped the format around Melbourne's outer suburbs and shown there is more in the city's small-water network than most local anglers credit it with.
Singh framed the format up front. "If you guys watch a lot of American fishing videos, pond hopping is basically just a fishing challenge," he said. "You essentially hop from one pond to another to try and catch as much fish as you can." His subscriber crew - Jeffy, Blake, Lawson, Hudson and Zach - opened the day at Pakenham Lake, the kind of stocked outer-suburban water that often slips off radar maps. The first significant fish was a 25 cm redfin perch with a damaged dorsal. "His fin is like proper broken," Singh said, before sliding the perch back.
The second stop, Rowville, came with the kind of caveat any local angler would recognise. "Rowville is usually a tough lake to fish," Singh said. The break came courtesy of a borrowed split shot from Sammy, a Rowville regular and YouTuber who had joined the crew. After Singh's weightless soft plastic refused to cast cleanly, Sammy clipped a small split-shot to the front. "Way better casting distance and sink rate is way better as well," Singh said. The new rig produced a quick eat - and a useful identification debate.
The fish came up in his hand and immediately split the crew. "Wait, is that a bass?" someone asked. "I thought EP have like a dented head." Singh hedged. "Bass have red eyes, right? It's got red eyes. It's relatively smooth here. Is it a bass or is it an EP? I don't know. But hey, that's my, I'm not sure if it's my first bass because in Sydney, I'm pretty sure the lakes there have bass and I used to catch them." The fish went back unhurt either way - and the moment is a useful one for anglers learning to separate Australian bass from estuary perch on small public water.
A creek detour beside a Melbourne golf course pulled in a redfin under blackberry overhangs and produced one of the funnier asides of the day. Singh worked out a self-imposed boundary that kept him to the public-creek side rather than the course frontage. "Technically there's a golf course," he said. "As long as I don't go on their side." The fish dropped at the bank and the rescue mission left him with cuts that lasted nearly a fortnight. "It wouldn't be a SinghFishing video without some cut fishing," he said.
The headline catch came when Singh switched approaches at the final lake. "Instead of the fish finding us, I decided, why don't I go and find the fish?" he said. He pinched a piece of bread to a hook, waded chest-deep into the lake's tall edge grass and stalked two visible commons until one ate. The fight on six-pound line was anything but quick. "Definitely a tough mission," he conceded as the line twisted up and forced him into the water to net the fish himself. "We put like blood, sweat and tears into this fish. We went around the lake almost two times."
The carp taped at 59 cm and was released cleanly. The wider point of the video, beyond the highlight, is the simplicity of the format - a spinning combo, a soft plastic, a piece of bread, and the willingness to walk into a few bushes and take an ID debate seriously. SinghFishing's small-water list - redfin, possible bass or estuary perch, common carp - is a fair sample of what Melbourne's stocked suburban water can produce on a quiet weekend, and an honest blueprint for anglers across other Australian capitals to mirror locally.