Paul Arden | Monday, 6 June 2016
I'm back in England from the 15th June onwards for the rest of the European summer. I have quite a busy summer lined up! A week in Jersey Channel Islands preparing the Jersey World Masters Fly Casting Team (two of us), a week in Russia on the Varzina River (still some places left, but not many!), a teaching weekend with Bernd in North Germany, another in Switzerland supporting Daniela's shop (you can test and buy Hot Torpedos here) and of course the Great Hungarian Wine Festival at Sexyloops Camp Latohegy. If you would like a flycasting tune-up or a day's stillwater trouting then please get in touch! I'm particularly looking forward to working on my competition casting, running again and lifting weights. Also it will be nice to get away from the incessant heat for a while! Exciting times indeed and I'm looking forward to the change.
Now, it must have been some 20 years ago when Dave Stocker gave me a couple of Maniform Grips to try. He gave me these at one of the shows where I was casting, the Chatsworth Angling Fair I think, and I immediately fitted one to a Loomis IMX blank, and loved it! I used this rod and grip for many years. I talked to Dave last year because I wanted to put one on one of our Hot Torpedo rods. Since then Graeme Hird has put one on an HT Instructor 6 blank, and it generated a lot of interest on Facebook. If you want to try one of these grips we can of course fit them to Sexyloops Hot Torpedo fly rods. There is no extra cost but it will add one week to delivery.
I have one week left here in the jungle. I'm currently running my mate's Rainforest Bar again, putting a stocking system into place and enjoying my time here. I'd rather be fishing and so hopefully he'll find a new barman before I leave! It's a pretty special place. I won't be back for a while, probably not until late January. The "plan" is to fish NZ or Australia or both in Nov/Dec and perhaps January. And then I'll be back for another stint at Snakehead and Gourami. I'll come back with a sounder for the Jungle Perch too and hopefully a bigger boat for sleeping on. Life tends to take me in different directions but I think this is a good plan. In the meatime I'm looking forward to getting on the travelling/fishing road with Ashly.
I've learned more about fishing in the last 11 months than the last 5 years. Snakehead have really raised my casting-shot game, my ability to fight fish hard on fly gear and I've got involved in fishing braid for tippets while experimenting and learning about a fish (Gourami) that is not generally targeted on fly gear. Overall it's been quite fascinating. That's why I came here of course and why I'll keep coming back. Temenggor is my current fly fishing classroom - and it's like no other! But now another adventure begins...
Now for those of you considering taking a flycasting lesson, I teach "style". You might have heard about flycasting instructors who teach substance only and allow you to invent your own style. That's not me and I actually think instructors have this backwards. I teach you how to move your body to best move the rod. I teach stance, grip, body position and coordinated motion. And I give you practise drills so that you can best practise this. Of course I don't teach the same style to everyone, because no two people are exactly the same, but I put my coaching eye over your overall body form and improve that. And that might make me little different; I teach the stuff that scares flycasting instructor associations!
Have a wonderful week
Cheers, Paul