Paul Arden | Tuesday, 26 July 2022
It’s been a busy and at times chaotic few weeks for me. I’ve had two Tasmanian anglers visiting. A mixture of guiding and then setting them free. With some excellent results. George managed a 6.5KG free-riser which was a brute of a fish, while fishing solo on the final day of that two week session. Declan and George together both really nailed some great fishing I’m happy to report.
Also one of my regular visitors, Richard, had some excellent fishing during his simultaneous stay. I’ll add photos to the “pic of day” section shortly. It wasn’t easy — this is never easy! — but everyone managed some excellent fishing. I also had a few casts myself at the end and caught one for me as well! Thanks lads!!
The lads will be here for a little bit more time as well. This weekend we will head into Sungai Tiang to shoot the final episode of the TV series I’m hosting here. I’ll mostly be talking BS and fishing with Khairul. The Tassie lads will head further upstream where the fishing is best and the tigers are hungrier.
And then I have a little time off. Wow! I have some commitments for Voice Overs and a spare week I can host someone 15-22 August. And then I’m booked or otherwise busy until second week October.
If you are thinking of visiting then October/November/December is a great time to come. Usually this is one of the prime times for Giant Snakehead particularly adults with babies. I host two trips/month. Please do get in touch if you are interested because I expect these months to fill up fast now that travel restrictions have been removed for Internationals visiting Malaysia.
This past weekend I had a bit of a down-to-Earth moment. I didn’t expect to do any great things in the Desaru 70.3 triathlon but I did expect to be an hour and a half quicker than I was! I now realise that I have to take this more seriously. Even more seriously than I’ve been taking is since last time down-to-Earth.
I’m booked for a 70.3 triathlon in England in late September which I’m hoping to make (flights are complicated). And I’ve just yesterday booked into the Langkawi 70.3 in November. (Guy Fawkes day; there will be fireworks I hope!).
About 2-3 weeks ago I realised I was doing the wrong sort of training. I was training for middle distance instead of long distance. I’ve never really had to think about this before because I always enjoyed running 20km+ runs. Here I haven’t had (or perhaps made) enough time.
So just like when I coach flycasting tailor-made to expected fishing circumstances, I need to refocus my personal tri training to longer distance. Mostly long lower intensity with some high short intensity trainings, instead of what I’ve been doing which is somewhere in-between and only good for that purpose.
Fun fun fun! But now I will start to take these things more seriously because I don’t think being an “also ran” is the very best I can do!
Back to the lake now to nail some Snakehead and for George to catch a Gourami!
Have a great week.
Cheers, Paul