Paul Arden | Tuesday, 18 November 2025
In the ten or twelve years I’ve been fishing in Malaysia I’ve noticed a shift in seasons. The Wet Season arrives later. And the Dry Season (which should mean virtually no rain at all between February and mid April) doesn’t mean that at all any more. Or at least that’s how things now appear and what was once very predictable is now highly unpredictable.
Right now I’m waiting for the rains to appear. This will cause the lake level to rise and trigger the Snakehead to start spawning. This is some of the best fishing of the year. The forecast says rain, so I’m hopeful. But it’s been saying that for weeks.
In the meantime I’ve been doing a lot of mainly night-time Zoom coaching. Many of my students are experiencing winter in the US and the most practical time for us to meet at this time of year is early morning in the States, which means after dark here. I have a floodlight on the stern of the boat for this. Sometimes the light attracts jungle wasps which roam at night, and I catch them with a handheld vacuum cleaner. It’s all very exciting and I have yet to fall in! It’s been close once or twice…
I’ve learned a huge amount with this flycasting coaching which I’ve been doing for about five years in this way now. It’s definitely my best work. It’s fascinating to try things and come up with new drills and cues. And the best part is to meet the students again and again and see what is retained, what has worked, sometimes what didn’t work… all in all it’s quite fascinating.
I have five, possibly six, maybe even seven, athletes attending next year’s flycasting World Championships in Italy. And I expect them to take a few medals too. I also work with a lot of instructors, both CI and MCI. But the vast majority of my students are saltwater anglers.
That’s not surprising I think because being consistently successful at fly fishing in saltwater requires a high level of casting skill. Taking shots, often in the wind, with sometimes heavy flies and tackle, both forehand and backhand, and sometimes at distance, requires training.
I find that most self-coached anglers plateau at around 75’, many have a serviceable/ish double haul and something of a roll cast. Very few can cope well with the wind. Most people can get to this point on their own. But to really progress much beyond this we need coaching. Particularly when it comes to biomechanics, which IMO is still often taught very poorly.
What I do find interesting is how learning and practising single handed Speys improves distance casting, how learning the 170 improves timing, how learning the range of presentation casts and mends improves loop control. I often find myself improving a certain cast or movement pattern in a completely different cast or set of casts.
This is not something I fully appreciated before. But when you give a course of lessons over a year or more to the same student, and do this multiple times over scores of students then patterns emerge. I always look for patterns!
I have a little over 90 students currently so it’s a little bit crazy at times. Some I see less frequently, particularly as they progress in ability, but we still meet for refreshers, usually prior to a trip. It’s also wonderful to take a typical intermediate caster and work with them to become high level. That and the competition coaching I find the most rewarding.
Reading up on biomechanics, sports coaching, constraints and the mental game, has changed how I approach coaching. I won’t say that I actually know what I’m doing, because that usually backfires, but I certainly know a lot more than I once did!And I really have to thank my students for this development too because it’s one thing to read something and quite another to thoroughly assess its worth in the field.
Now if just the bloody rain would arrive I’d be happy!
I will try to put some more drills up on YouTube. I have a long list of things that I want to do and that’s one of them.
I’ve more or less recovered from the Ironman. I had my return to my weekly 4hr+ bike ride on Saturday night. And I plan to run 21km tomorrow. Once the date and location for the flycasting WCs is officially announced (and assuming it’s affordable this time), I’ll look to plan a race in Europe. Either a full distance IM or a 70.3 with my sister, or maybe both. It will be fun to race without the tropical humidity. I suspect I’ll be faster!
I have a lot of guiding/hosting coming up. Two weeks in December, three in January and I believe two more in February. It’s my busy time of year. March is open and still good for Snakehead with babies. So if you fancy a trip then please get in touch! I plan to base myself in Sungai Tiang for some months after this. This is definitely somewhere you should visit too.
Have a great week.
Cheers, Paul