Paul Arden | Monday, 24 February 2025
Many years ago when I first started fly fishing for Giant Gourami I had enormous problems landing them. This was very frustrating because they are very difficult to fool in the first place. I’ve written about it before and for the first year of targeting them I hooked ten only to lose them all to stumps. Prior to this I had hooked four and landed one (in open water, and a relatively small one).
I had bought spectra with the idea of using it for tippets with Snakehead. But I had subsequently solved those landing problems by ever increasing the strength of nylon tippet to 40lbs and learning to tie proper knots. Prior to this I had never landed a Snakehead over 5KG. What can I say? The jungle is full of snags. Literally it is a flooded jungle.
Anyway I would then try braid for tippet with the Gourami. This is a very spooky fish. The fly sizes are usually around size 8 and they are dry flies fished static. The Gourami has all the time in the world to inspect the fly. And it regularly spends 1-2 minutes doing this, which is really quite extraordinary. We had one look at the fly for over 5 minutes… and refuse. But this mind-blowing 5 minute refusal happened later.
Braid has been the absolute game-changer for landing Giant Gourami. I experimented with different colours over the years. It does seem to make a difference and black or dark green works best.
Now it’s a mistake to compare breaking strains. Say for example you usually fish 20lbs nylon tippet to then fish 20lbs braid makes little sense. 50lbs braid is thinner than 20lbs nylon. So I go by diameter. Instead of fishing 8lb nylon tippet for Gourami I now fish 20lbs braid.
I am sure that for Permit on the edge of reefs, for example, braid will again be a game-changer. And I’m looking forward to testing that.
Anyway the point is that fish don’t “see” the tippet. I mean they must see it but it doesn’t register. That’s why this fluorocarbon’s “invisibility in water” is totally ridiculous. The old maxima spools from 40 years ago had brown tippet and it on the spools the embossed marketing was “the line the fish cannot see”!!! It’s not the fish who are gullible!
Yes if you drift a fly line over a fish in New Zealand it will spook. There is no question they see! But you can tie flies to black opaque braid and the fish will eat. Taking of which, March is the beginning of Gourami Time. I hope to catch a few more this year! But now I’m going looking for Snakehead.
Have a great day.
Cheers, Paul