As anyone who knows me well, will know that I think 3000 days of a specific type of fly fishing is enough to know about 95% of it. Here on the jungle lake I’m on about 3500, pushing 4000. 3000 is enough to be a guide. I am a guide. But I need to get out of here soonish and become a beginner again. I prefer learning the big stuff and I believe that the greatest attribute of fly fishing is that you can become a beginner, many times over, simply by changing fish species and/or sometimes location.

Two things have to happen before we go. 1) I need to acquire a sailing boat, so I can be a pirate. And 2) I need to learn Malay in order to get Permanent Residence, in case we come back. I think it’s unlikely we will actually come back, but I’d like to leave that door open. I think it’s much more likely that we end up living on a pacific island, or shipwrecked and living like Robinson Crusoe, but I really don’t know. I don’t plan my whole life out. It’s not an exploration if you know where you are going or what you will find!

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Earlier this week I was pondering what to write about whilst wading down a flat having just lost a bonefish to a leader breakage, it then came to me that I should write about the various ways I've lost fish on this trip.  Having decided on the topic a thought popped into my head – I'd not been 'sharked' once in over four weeks of fishing.  Now obviously this moment of cerebral smugness was not going to go unpunished by the fishing gods and the very next fish I hooked, literally no more than fifteen minutes later, was eaten by a super fast moving lemon shark.

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This week I thought I'd give you a wee break from the saltwater stuff this week with a nice dry fly: the tape wing caddis. It's very good.

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Last weekend went for protecting reindeers and trying to figure out where wolf is. Wednesday it was around farm and two nights later in neigbour's surveillance camera during night figuring out how to get in dog's fence. And next two nights around horse stable just 1 mile from our farm. Horse stable has also sheeps and pony which they had to lock inside, totally new thing for those animals as they are out all year round.

And after Monday there is no sign or footprints from wolf, so danger avoided at this point. Tuesday I went check our lake and ice from there as on Thursday they would group coming for ice fishing. Every two year same group has come and after them we have been off on vacation, both times in Malaysia. This would be their third time now.

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I had a practice session today. Just to check that everything was in order for tomorrow’s competition. It was hard to tell. The wind was all over the place. I could not tell which direction it was blowing, it felt like I had a head wind in both directions. On top of that I had a crosswind that showed up here and there. Then the fucking cat shows up from nowhere. It is the fucking cat because it seems to need to be walked on a leash and at the same time manages to sneak out from home and find me. Starting by just watching me and what’s going on. Then see the brightly coloured line. I don’t want to know what it will do if I let it get close to my line because my guess it is will be kind of the same thing that would happen if a pike or barracuda takes a bite of a fly line. The fluff could be acceptable to chase a bit, if practice goes well. So I just end up in a situation where I snap the line around to keep it away from the fucking cat.

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Home sweet home Los Angeles. It’s been a minute. The world turns, the world burns. What a mess. Interesting times. It’s very hard to know what’s going on these days. The legacy news sources (NYTimes, and networks) all announced the impending departure of fric and frac to Islamabad for negotiations with Iran’s foreign minister, while many independent sources said it wasn’t gonna happen. It didn’t happen. I’m a little disgusted with the Times. They’ve pretty much become a puzzle app with some news features. They’re not meeting the moment. I do like their puzzles - solved the Wordle in 2 tries two days in a row! I’m home enjoying my secret little family of roommates and my 18 year-old cat who took a couple of days to realize I was here. He’s now returning to papa, with greasy fur and bad breath asking for his sugar and napping on my chest. 

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