Paul Arden | Monday, 21 January 2019
I’ve been gathering together a group of like-minded fly casters in Kuala Lumpur for the past few months. The plan is to meet every month to cast, compete and share ideas. I’m doing this partly for their benefit but also for personal reasons - namely the best way to stay up to speed and improve your game is to compete regularly.
We had one such meet last weekend. We cast using World Championship rules for Accuracy, Trout and Sea Trout Distance. For the accuracy it was quite difficult because at the beginning Ashly asked me if I had measured the distances, I said not. So of course we measured the distances and placed the rings as far away as possible!
For this event we did it twice. First time with the HT6 Instructor rod that I normally use and the second time with an HT4. The line is a MED 5 for this event. We did this because I’m very familiar that the Americans like to use softer rods (I believe Chris Korich uses a 20yr old Fenwick rod, which is very much of the soft side) and of course they kick our arses.
Personally I’m not very good at this event and am usually one of the “also rans” apart from one year where I spectacularly made the final in Pole Position with, I think, either 61, 62 or 63 points (I’d forget my name if it wasn’t written on my shirt). Normally in this comp I score around 40 points out of the possible 80. So it was interesting to see I threw 39 with the HT6 and 59 with the HT4. So maybe there is something in these softer rods after all - even if I am off the pace!
Last month Scientific Anglers kindly sent us some MED5 lines with a topical coating. Here in Malaysia the standard MED turns to overcooked spaghetti really rather quickly. So I was excited to try these for the first time. Using the HT10 I threw 126’ with the tropical and then 119’ with the standard MED.
And then out of curiosity we threw the tropical MED on the HT12. My longest cast here was 124’ so slightly less than the HT10. However the second longest with the HT10 was 116’ compared to 121’ with the HT12. So more experimenting to be done here I think!
All in all a very interesting session. Also good to see a relative youngest come along - Ali - a bloke with excellent potential.
This week I have An Ren Tan and his girlfriend visiting from Singapore. I have no idea what the fishing is like at the moment but I’m excited to be back! I’m hoping that the Snakehead are active and as off to find out now!
Cheers, Paul