Paul Arden | Monday, 9 March 2015
An interesting page yesterday from Bruce on the current and not so current trend of "working outside the AFFTA system". My view is this, if you feel the need to upline your rod from the manufacturer's rating then you bought the wrong rod! We have reviews of 5 weight rods being made with 5.5 wt lines, we have lines being made heavier for "today's fast action rods" - what a load of crap. When a designer makes a rod for a designated line weight, he does so for that line weight specified. If you choose to use a heavier line because it doesn't feel right for you, then it was the wrong purchase. And let's face it, some people are fast; they move fast, they drive fast, they live fast. Others are slow - they move slow, life happens in the slow lane for them - these are Winston people and glass fibre addicts. So they should be buying soft rods and not fast actioned rods! Buy the right rod in the first place. Of course a good caster should be able to adapt to anything...
Anyway I'm just back from a three day camping/boating/fishing trip with the new Miss Sexyloops (it's been a while since there's been a Miss Sexyloops!) to South Temenggor. I had one small free-swimming snakehead eat (and not connect) and two chases from a really big mother. I was sure that the big one was going to strike but she turned away at the last moment. It's been really hard, even the Jungle Perch are not in evidence, and I saw zero Gourami. Anyway at least Ashly got to see a Snakehead chase!
We had a great trip, camping under the stars, showering under waterfalls, eating eggs and broccoli for breakfast - and noodles and peas for tea, drinking Jungle Juice and wine, and generally exploring a very beautiful part of the world. I absolutely love this place, it is so beautiful and untouched. You wake up to the sound of monkeys and fall asleep to the sound of cicadas. Every time I visit I see something new, a new species of butterfly, a brightly coloured spider, flowers, trees and just a whole bunch of stuff that I never even knew existed... if only the fishing was on fire!
Now the other big news is that it transpires that the Chinese know a thing or two - not about breakfast of course - but about numbers. Number four in Chinese means "death" - or to be more precise it sounds a bit like "death" to them, consequently I couldn't sell Hot Torpedo serial number 4 in Malaysia. So I kept it for myself and it become my number. Of course I should have known better; we already don't have a number four on Sexyloops. That had nothing to do with Chinese superstition, but instead EFFA, who also didn't have a number 4 on their Masters syllabus questions when I posted them on Sexyloops many years ago. When I took the Masters with the FFF later that year, Tom Jindra asked me, "What is question number 4 on the EFFA Masters?" I thought he was mad and couldn't answer. Tom was very happy about this, to be able to ask me a question I couldn't answer. And so ever since then Sexyloops has never had a number 4 on any list.
Well I'm happy to tell you that there is now no serial number 4 Hot Torpedo rod. There may actually be two of them, the PRO6 and the COMP5, but since these have both been stolen by Hantu Tetek they are no longer in this dimension. The others were fine until the middle of last week when I drove the Trooper over them. That's right I broke the 4-weight, Instructor 6 and HT8 all in one quick driving manoeuvre. So that was Squeaker Death for the remaining serial number 4s. Currently I now only have a prototype Sexyloops 10ft 6wt and a bottom three HT10 Proto/Tip HT8 hybrid. It's time for a new set of rods! Anyway it's all good because we are going for a new look. So that was lucky... But next time I won't be using serial number 4!!
Have a great week!
Cheers, Paul