Paul Arden | Tuesday, 25 January 2022
This week I’m up in Sungai Tiang. I’ve you’ve missed it this is an interesting project where I’m helping to organise a C&R FFing only stretch of river here in Malaysia. The guides who I’ve been training are the indigenous Orang Asli, the village community owns and operates the business making all profits. My involvement is strictly non profit of course. It’s been throughly enjoyable. This will be the last training trip and we are finalising camp positions and establishing how feasible it is to pull a raft upstream.
I’ll also be taking my good friend, Juan Wade, along. He guides for the same Mahseer fish in Thailand (although one of the Thai species is a different colour and therefore a slightly different species!), who will be able to pass on his guiding knowledge to the Aslis.
I’ll also be taking up the new HT5 rod and I’ll make a fishing video using it. I’ll also be taking along the Drone to give me some additional heart in the mouth excitement. We have five days up there which will mean something like four fishing days, but the plan is to establish up to six fishing days and so we will do two fishing beats on two days. Exploring further upstream is something that I still haven’t done yet, so that’s another purpose.
All being well, the river will be open for guests next month. Here in Malaysia, International tourist travel to the peninsula where we are is still not allowed. So I expect only Malaysians will be visiting in the short term, however, fingers crossed, international guests will be allowed back into the country soon.
The Prime Time to visit this river is the Dry Season in Belum Rainforest which is Feb-April. From May-September it’s very much conditions dependent. Rain can discolour the river making it unfishable for 2-3 days. So if you are traveling internationally then definitely plan for the Dry Season!!
Very busy with the HT5 orders. Blanks are being rolled now. Definitely order now if you want yours by April. It’s turning into quite a long list but that’s as expected!
I’ll be back Friday!
Cheers, Paul