As anyone who knows me well, will know that I think 3000 days of a specific type of fly fishing is enough to know about 95% of it. Here on the jungle lake I’m on about 3500, pushing 4000. 3000 is enough to be a guide. I am a guide. But I need to get out of here soonish and become a beginner again. I prefer learning the big stuff and I believe that the greatest attribute of fly fishing is that you can become a beginner, many times over, simply by changing fish species and/or sometimes location.

Two things have to happen before we go. 1) I need to acquire a sailing boat, so I can be a pirate. And 2) I need to learn Malay in order to get Permanent Residence, in case we come back. I think it’s unlikely we will actually come back, but I’d like to leave that door open. I think it’s much more likely that we end up living on a pacific island, or shipwrecked and living like Robinson Crusoe, but I really don’t know. I don’t plan my whole life out. It’s not an exploration if you know where you are going or what you will find!

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It was a holiday weekend. I stayed behind and watched the commemorations for Anzac Day, our local memorial for armed personnel who served.

The rumours I'd been reading online about the starting winter run of trout read like code. It was happening, but fish numbers might not be high and they'd likely take some finding. Still, the weather was nice and I've had luck at this time of year. The fish tend to be bigger early season, and catching those ones is worth a trip. Work had been heavy lately and difficult to get away from, which was another good reason to escape for a fish. Fired up the car and loaded the fishing gear.

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Tracy and I are now back in Wales recovering after our trip.  My feet still feel like I've just walked off a rocky flat after an eight hour day of wading, and my sand fly and mosquito bites are still a bit itchy.  I was pleased when I weighed myself though, I've lost at least half a stone (7lb) which is exceedingly hard to do at my age (I've been trying to lose some weight since Christmas).  I think the weight loss is testament to how hard we hit the fishing – however the effort paid off, it was a very successful trip for us.

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This week's fly is a nice, simple saltwater pattern that will do a turn on loads of species: the E-Z body sand eel. A excellent fly for the beach that's worth having anywhere sand eel are found, which is a lot of places.

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I had a practice session today. Just to check that everything was in order for tomorrow’s competition. It was hard to tell. The wind was all over the place. I could not tell which direction it was blowing, it felt like I had a head wind in both directions. On top of that I had a crosswind that showed up here and there. Then the fucking cat shows up from nowhere. It is the fucking cat because it seems to need to be walked on a leash and at the same time manages to sneak out from home and find me. Starting by just watching me and what’s going on. Then see the brightly coloured line. I don’t want to know what it will do if I let it get close to my line because my guess it is will be kind of the same thing that would happen if a pike or barracuda takes a bite of a fly line. The fluff could be acceptable to chase a bit, if practice goes well. So I just end up in a situation where I snap the line around to keep it away from the fucking cat.

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Home sweet home Los Angeles. It’s been a minute. The world turns, the world burns. What a mess. Interesting times. It’s very hard to know what’s going on these days. The legacy news sources (NYTimes, and networks) all announced the impending departure of fric and frac to Islamabad for negotiations with Iran’s foreign minister, while many independent sources said it wasn’t gonna happen. It didn’t happen. I’m a little disgusted with the Times. They’ve pretty much become a puzzle app with some news features. They’re not meeting the moment. I do like their puzzles - solved the Wordle in 2 tries two days in a row! I’m home enjoying my secret little family of roommates and my 18 year-old cat who took a couple of days to realize I was here. He’s now returning to papa, with greasy fur and bad breath asking for his sugar and napping on my chest. 

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