Paul Arden | Tuesday, 18 February 2020
I’m busy organising my world into plastic boxes in preparation for living in the Battleship starting next month. The following weekend there is a fly fishing festival in another part of Malaysia, which I will be attending.
When I wrote the Essential Level Challenge I did so, not only with the idea of creating an interesting test, but more for the purpose of organising fly casting practise. It also nicely gives me - and anyone else who wants it - a syllabus for teaching fly casting. It dawned on me at the time that it would also make for an excellent presentation. And so at the Terengganu FF Festival I shall be teaching this as my demo. There is actually a Snakehead Shot in there as and a Gourami “fly first” shot too.
The other things I’ll be doing is tying both Gourami and Snakehead Leaders (probably 1/2 size to save time), tying ugly flies for both species and there will no doubt be a lumi-line fight.
I’m considering popping over a few days earlier to explore Lake Kenyir. This is a big lake, even larger than Belum-Temenggor where I live. I don’t think that the topography is as interesting and I’ve heard mixed reports on the fishing. But it is certainly something of great interest to me. I had planned to explore it for a month some years back, but this still has yet to happen.
Later this year I will expand upon the Sexyloops Challenge, create an advanced level (similar to FFI MCI level but with all the Spey casts into targets and not just a few of them cast and without targets!), an “Elite” level which will be extremely challenging indeed. And then, for those who have truly mastered advanced level fly casting, a “Jedi” level that will really be quite exceptional. The purpose of that is to set a higher bar for those of us who enjoy a tough challenge!
This is the Essential Level Challenge:
https://www.sexyloops.com/index.php/ps/the-essential-level-challenge
As you can see it’s fairly straightforward and very much fishing casting orientated with Collapsed Casts and everything being thrown into a target. Probably the hardest cast is the backhand overpowered curve cast around an object.
Over on the Board there is an excellent discussion on Curve Casts including the Svirgolato cast, which thoroughly interests me and will be part of the Elite Level (so start practising!).
https://www.sexyloops.co.uk/theboard/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3190
Lots of good stuff on the Board at the moment. Drop me an email on paul@sexyloops.com if you want to join in!
Hope to see some of you in Terengganu!
Cheers, Paul