Paul Arden | Monday, 1 June 2026
It’s all about to happen. Finally I’ve found some big freerising Snakehead and some stumping Gourami. This is “summer” fishing in Malaysia. Early for the stumpers. Late for the freerisers. Nowadays nothing is predictable around here.
I’m writing this on Sunday night and I’m totally wasted (physically, I mean!!). Saturday nights is my long 5hrs indoor endurance ride and last night I finished with a pyramid. Which in cycling terms is exactly what it sounds like. So I feel good, even if I am a train-wreck today.
Tomorrow, I’ll be going through one of Nick’s Sexyloops Zoom lessons. Thank goodness! I’m fed up of going through my Zoom lessons with Nick and constantly thinking “well that could have been better!” It’s been really good to do this. It’s helping to tighten up my lessons, but most importantly, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, it means that you too can now get Sexyloops lessons and become a flycasting Jedi Master.
And that’s very exciting. Many years ago I learned to dive with PADI, and at the time I thought “this would be great for flycasting” and now, more than 25 years later, this sort of structure is being applied to the Sexyloops flycasting world.
Nick is an outstanding coach. I’m very lucky. Well actually that’s not entirely true, because if Nick wasn’t an outstanding coach then we wouldn’t be doing this together! So it’s a genuine pleasure.
Incidentally, Andy says that Nick needs to grow a long beard. “By the way, I'm growing my beard back out again real long, so tell Nick it's now a prerequisite that if you're going to be affiliated with Sexyloops, you have to have a long beard”.
And he’s right of course. All fly fishers need long beards. As coaches this is so that we can have long beard-stroking moments. “What do you think of my cast?” “Let me stroke my beard and think about it for a moment”. So Andy: Nick is growing a long beard. Great input there!
Andy is of course the Texan Redneck Sexyloops Rodmaker. So T hat’s right, Sexyloops Tornados are now both designed and built by beards that you can trust.
So my afternoon, here in the jungle, is getting this FP up, having a Malay language lesson, answering emails and WhatsApp messages, and then I’m going to try to catch a fish or two. It’s all happening around here. Oh and I also have to work out how to edit footage from my insta360 camera that my wife gave me for my birthday last December!!
Cheers, Paul
Pod: a still from the 360 camera. This was a big bastard freerising Snakehead that followed and then refused last night. Over 5KG.