Martyn White | Thursday, 17 February 2022
It's been an unusually cold winter with some late snow in Tokyo but spring seems to be arriving and we've had some much needed rain bringing the rivers up to a reasonable level. While I'm waiting for them to clear I started tying flies for Sungai Tiang. I think this is a really good project to support, I've sent stuff over in the past and hijacked some presentation time to push it to some of the stakeholders at work when Paul first set up the fundraiser. Now it's nice to be able to send something that the guys there will actually be using on the water.
I've just started on a batch of foam terrestrials that are similar to what a friend has used for mahseer in Thailand so hopefully they'll be suitable. The thing that struck me when I was planning what to tie is how the guys who are learning to guides can replicate the patterns in future. Eventually flies will get beaten up and lost so they need to be something that the guys there can make a reasonable copy of once they run out. Hopefully future guests will be bringing their own flies too, but they might not or they might bring stuff that's unsuitable for whatever reason (shitty hooks most likely, a common but terrible place to cut costs)
I know there are a couple of tying vices there, but there's not a fly shop, I assume the closest is in KL. And they've got all of their tying instruction from Paul. So I'll be keeping the patterns simple with inexpensive material that is as easy to source as possible. I'll maybe put together some materials to send too as it'll give them a chance to practise and experiment on their own. Perhaps that's something non-tyers might want to do to support this too. Here's Paul's address to send the flies to in case you forgot to write it down.
Paul Arden
223 Jalan Semarak 18,
Taman Semarak,
Gerik,
Perak
33300
Malaysia
In other news I crossed the 200 mark with my trusty rubber candy last week, which was pretty satisfying and although I did retire it, there was a part of me that wanted to keep fishing it. But really now that's done I can be much less careful about losing them which will probably make me fish better. I think I might frame the little hero and put it in my tying room.