Alive and Casting

Alive and Casting

Paul Arden | Monday, 20 April 2020

We have been selling a lot of rods this past week. Thank you!! We will survive this epidemic. But right now is a great time to order rods. Thank you again!! We had a flat three weeks, where we managed to catch up and get a little bit in front. But this week: we are back on track. I really don’t know what’s going to happen this summer - who does? In the meantime I hope that you are all safe and enjoying flytying - or fishing, if you are lucky enough to get out.

I was isolated in the jungle about 10km from the nearest person. I saw two boats in three weeks. One of them must had reported me to the police who came to find me! I was having breakfast in my underpants when they arrived. There were four of them and one had a machine gun. 

I did have a backup compromise plan and had figured out that I could park my boat at a friend’s island resort, which the police were happy with. Nice guys by the way. I’ve always found the police here to be very friendly. The problem with my new location was that the Internet was very poor, even worse than where I was previously stationed, despite being considerably less remote!

So I’ve headed back to Gerik. There are no cases of CV in town. I need to get online properly, apart from which I had run out of coffee, beer and jungle juice.  It was nice to escape three weeks of lock-in and be well and truly isolated in my world. But obviously not isolated enough! Ashly and I will get this ocean-going sailing boat in 5 years time and then we can be truly remote.

I discovered something out in my isolation: Snakehead are smart. Maybe not clever like Gourami but not far off. After a few days they stopped eating my fly and instead only followed. And then after a little bit longer they stopped following altogether. They also move around in groups - which I already knew, but it was interesting because sometimes there were no fish in the bay (probably). A very insightful three weeks and another piece to the jigsaw puzzle.

Still having got kicked out of my remote isolation in favour of something less remote meant that I’ve been working on my fly box. I like fly tying but I prefer other things in life. So I only tie flies when I absolutely need to. And I was down to about three poppers and fancied some other experiments. So I’ve now got a box full of Snakehead poppers! There is always a silver lining to everything.

Lots of photos coming your way today - a Mahseer trip that I talked about many moons ago and the past three weeks of isolation. Possibly a video too - I’ll see what I’ve got.

Great stuff on the Board and it’s good to be back :)))

Cheers, Paul