Paul Arden | Monday, 16 November 2015
Terrible news from Paris. I hope everyone is safe. My sister lost a friend. Very sad news on her birthday. Unfortunately I think we are going to be plagued by these people for a very long time to come. On with the fishing. (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)
Video moments from the Jungle...
It takes an incredibly long time to upload a video here in the Jungle. The latest Snakehead video took around 12 hours to upload! Anyway there are now two up: a Gourami on Fly and an instructional video of Snakehead on Fly. I'll be making shorter videos from now on, not least because of the long upload times. Both were great fishing moments however; catching a nice Gourami is always fun and then to say I was going to catch a large Snakehead in the morning and actually accomplish it in the evening came as a complete surprise.
I'm not sure how to fix my upload problems - maybe Instagram will be quicker than YouTube. The plan very shortly is to use my MrSexyloops Instagram account for video uploads and link this to Facebook.com/Sexyloops and MrSexyloops on Twitter. Maybe I can have someone upload them to YouTube who has a faster connection or a longer life. With the duration of the upload times I can realistically only do this only once a week and not the 3-4 I had originally planned - but let's see what happens.
It's been fun running a camera off the front of the boat. It makes the fishing more challenging too, because I always need to position the boat in a way that the camera can see the shot! Anyway I hope you can, or will, see my attraction to living here in the jungle. Another advantage of running a GoPro camera (attached to a paddle) in this way, is that I can take action still shots and add them to the Gallery.
On another note it's been good to watch myself fish from a third-party perspective - normally I only do this while casting. I really am doing what I say on the 2m flyline pickup and lay-down shots, I am fighting the fish hard with a straight line pull, I'm pretty nifty at moving the rod around the back of the boat and finally, using Ten-Pound Tom's technique of holding the rod half way up, when landing fish, does seem to work rather well. One thing I can improve upon is my Snakehead fighting technique - I'd like to keep that rod straight all the way through until the final moments.
Seeing lots of elephants around at the moment. Male elephants can be very dangerous. I've had to move a few times now recently while held up in a shady lunch-time spot. The last thing I want is an elephant charging me while on the bank.
Have a great week. All our thoughts with Paris and those affected by this terrible atrocity.
Cheers, Paul