Paul Arden | Monday, 10 February 2025
Twenty two months is the amount of time I have remaining in Malaysia. Knowing this has made me appreciate the jungle fishing more. It sounds like a lot of time but in reality it’s not really very much. It’s just one more Wet Season.
The next plan is to sail and fly fish my way around the world and to live aboard for as long as I can. 20 years is the plan. I’ll have to stay pretty fit for this of course and the longer I can remain fit, the longer I can sail and fly fish the salt.
This has been a goal of mine for very many years. It both excites and terrifies me. I sometimes find myself Internet searching “ocean storms” and wonder what it would be like to be caught in such a tempest! Exciting is one word I would use.
Robinson Crusoe and Shogun – at different times in my life – have both captivated me. They both got shipwrecked of course.
Learning a new fly fishing environment, I am most certainly ready for, and I’m well past the 3000 fishing days expertise mark here in Malaysia. So it’s time for a new challenge. But in the meantime, I am going to thoroughly enjoy the remainder of the time I have left in the jungle. Maybe even more so, knowing that it is finite.
I haven’t yet decided if I sell everything I own and go, or else keep the “footprints” that I’ve made, both here and in Hungary. I have a chunk of land in Hungary, including a few log cabins and I have a “Battleship” in Malaysia.
Anyway I shall figure that part out over the next year, because this demands a thoughtful decision. In the meantime, what we have is fly rods to sell and a competition to be won…
For every one of the current block of 666 rods that we sell (or two blanks to builders, or two rods to instructors) you each get one entry. These entries will go into a hat (or maybe a sock, which is always an important thing on Sexyloops – bees love them too) and the lucky winner will win a two-week trip on the Sexyloops Yacht. I’ll fly you over and we will go seriously fishing. You will live on beans and potatoes for a couple of weeks (actually my cooking nowadays is far more adventurous – but don’t tell anyone) and we will fish and explore remote waters together. I can probably add something to your cast too.
This can be in a location of your choice, but there are definitely some prime places that I want to explore. Pretty much everything from Exmouth around to Cairns in Australia, for example, must be incredible. Everything and anywhere remote. The tropics. And of course, I need to visit South America.
Arguably some of the finest fly rods in the world (maybe the best) AND the chance to win a once-in-a-lifetime holiday! That can’t be bad! And yes, I will have the HT9 ready by then and a full range of long-belly flats lines (for anglers who can actually cast!). I also need a HT11 and to finalise the HT12. It’s an exploration. Bring a fly rod. Or ten.
If you’re in the market for a Battleship in Malaysia then let me know. It's not a bad business and guiding pays very well by Malaysian standards.
The greatest thing in life is the ability to push the reset button and start again. Understanding this allows us to have multiple lifetimes in one. The thread that glues it all together, for me at least, has always been fly fishing.
Cheers, Paul