Paul Arden | Tuesday, 17 March 2020
I’ve been fishing with Martyn this past week and, well I’m writing this on Saturday night, and we are really trying to catch him a fish. Martyn has been close and he has lost two. If we can break through the ice then I know better things will happen. Because today, despite being hard, was a possible multiple fish day!
Talking of which I have another favourite return guest, Richard, starting for five days with me as from Wednesday and I’m really excited to fish with him again too. Despite Richard believing himself not to be an expert fly caster, he actually makes it happen!
Richard puts shots in, or at least he did last time when he was here and had four Snakehead in three days or something like that. Not many shots at babies at the moment, around 2-3 average currently, but today was one possible Gourami, a free rising snakehead, a set of babies, a snakehead shifting territory, a snakehead doing weird surface stuff, a random close shot, a tougher shot at a wider angle change and I think that was it. Seven “money” shots - well maybe 6 “monies” and a challenge. That’s not bad, in fact despite the slow start to the day, that’s a great day of opportunities hard-earned. Ten money shots here is a truly spectacular day. Seven is up there.
So yeah... my own personal fishing... let me tell you about the “Belum Fly Fishing” gig. It’s basically about putting enough food and petrol on the table so that I can go fishing and make trips back to Europe for the World Championships and all my living-it-up expenses here in Malaysia. It’s a “full time job” of sorts but only 1/3rd of my time, so that I can fish the other 2/3rds - giving that extra additional zing to my guest’s experience - you absolutely have to walk the talk when you’re teaching this stuff! And spread out throughout the year I hope to teach 100 days.
Fishing “through” guests is a hard challenge. But it has to be in balance. I personally put about 90% of the shots in. This fishery has definitely upped my game. It’s extremely rewarding teaching it too. But at times also a little frustrating!!!
It’s about being clinical. It’s not all that difficult. But you have to be totally ruthless with your shots. Whatever happens you absolutely MUST put the shot in... it really is a mind game.
So it’s about being ruthless with your cast - and subtle too. Subtle ruthlessicity. I might be the only person who understands this. In fact most people don’t even know it exists. I only learned it myself about 20 words ago. But subtle ruthlessicity is the game here. I’ll be doing a lot of it in the weeks to come. It will be quite awesome. Watch this space!
Cheers, Paul