Paul Arden | Monday, 10 July 2017
I think what I love most about Giant Gourami is that there are so many methods available/required to catch them - and I'm still only sight fishing the surface for them. Last week Flavio and I encountered a fantastic rise of perhaps some 30 Gourami running a windlane over a 90 minute period. Our approach was to try to bomb them, intercepting their path and chasing them with the electric motor. I missed one and landed one of 3KG.
In retrospect this was the wrong approach. The problem is that in order to catch these fish you need to place the fly in the area the size of a tea-cup about 18 inches ahead of them. Trying to do this at 15-20 metres while chasing them down with the thruster is not the only available approach - not when there are such numbers of fish to be found.
What we should have done was sit down and fish the windlane as we fish for trout in Stillwaters. Then maybe we would have had five in the boat! Hopefully I'll get another shot at this type of rise when Ronan is visiting and we can really set about them.
Chuan was visiting this last weekend and caught a couple of "Stumpers" and a Toman off babies. One more member for the Wild Gourami on Fly Club! Flavio also took another - this time on his own, christening my new (second) boat "The Ronan" - not an easy task since this boat doesn't have a thruster yet. All in all, apart from running out of beer, it's been a great weekend!
I've decided to make Malaysia home for the foreseeable future. I'm starting to get really fantastic fly fishing - it's taken a while to work things out so far (and there is still a very long way to go!). And mostly because it's so hard, so incredibly interesting and so rewarding I really can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be right now - even if I am huddling under a tarp next to the campfire sheltering from an electric tropical storm... what fun!!!
This will be a busy week on Sexyloops for me. Lots of organising to do to try to clear the decks for when Ronan arrives. Some very serious fishing coming up for me (and Ronan!). The Gourami fishing is going to going to simply amaze him!
Cheers,
Paul
