Paul Arden | Sunday, 17 July 2022
A common statement I often hear, is that someone says to me that they would never guide because it might ruin their hobby. And I can certainly understand that it could happen. I got into hosting trips on the water, as opposed to just teaching fly casting, very carefully. It can definitely be a potential headache because you are dealing with people!
From my perspective it would be a problem if I didn’t fish on my days off. Then it would have turned it into something I wouldn’t want. I’ve been pretty lucky in life (or stubborn) in that I get to fish 330 sometimes 350 days/year and have been doing so pretty much every year since I started travelling at 21 years old. I don’t know the exact number but I’m somewhere at around eleven and half thousand fishing days now, which is rather a lot, but I want to do many many more! If you do the maths you can see I’ve been pretty busy, flat out fishing (I’m 51 now, pushing ancient, by the way). I do include guiding days in this total and I’ll explain why in a minute.
I have very many very good friends who are fishing guides and instructors. It depends whereabouts in the world they are, but often a busy guide, who makes a living doing it, possibly with seasonal winter work to supplement their income, usually guides around 100 days or more. If you have to fit all those days into a six or seven month fishing season, then it doesn’t leave an enormous amount of time to fish on your own!
I’m lucky here because, while that’s the number of guest days in my head that I want to do, I have 12 months each year to fit it in, which means hosting 10 days a month, ten months a year. That leaves me around 20 days each month to fish on my own and two months travelling. So that’s how I’ve managed to square this thing away as something I would like to incorporate into my world.
Most of my clients become friends and those who don’t I don’t take again! Dealing with idiots is not my thing, especially when it comes to fishing. So that part is taken care of!
Obviously it’s very different to fishing with a mate because there are expectations and if the fish are not behaving then you become the key element to the trip. You have to make the trip both memorable and enjoyable, otherwise you won’t get repeat guests and those are the ones you really want. My minimum stay duration now is 5 days. Most guests stay a week or more. So we are talking an absolute maximum of 20 visits a year. I will not do more than 100 days total however it works out. After all this is not a job preparing for my retirement (and I won’t); it’s our daily bread and butter – or beans and potatoes! – living costs only.
It’s nice to be doing it again. Covid really put a squeeze on us here in Malaysia. But it’s not just the income; it’s what we’ve planned to do for 5 years and it’s great to see it happening and to have guests here again. Next comes the sailing boat of course. Every year of lockdown was one more year away from sailing and flyfishing the world.
Let me quickly tell you about guiding/hosting because I’m covering for James and Tracy today and I’m already very late making this live! When I take someone fishing I fish through them (they may or may not know this). I have to fix their cast, or at least make it effective for Snakehead, always have to take what they can/cannot do into account when positioning the boat for the shot, preferably while teaching them how to do this on their own, trying to give them an awesome day, but basically I’m fishing through them. I learn an awful lot in this process. I know where my shots go when I’m doing it – and I get to see a lot of other shots from the other end of the boat! I see the difference between a 90% must-eat money-shot cast, and a 30% shot that will chase, to a shot that will spook the fish if blooped. I’ve often said it myself and it’s commonly said: if you really want to learn something then try teaching it.
The fishing is very hard here. Long hard days, usually in the sun; I’m on the water 12 or 13 hours straight. I cook breakfast and dinner too. It’s 24 hours hosting. But it’s really very good fun!!!
Snakehead off babies doesn’t mean very much to me nowadays, I’ve been doing it for almost ten years and I don’t find it all that challenging now. Of course it’s still difficult and I certainly don’t catch them all! However when I catch a Snakehead off babies through someone else then that means an awful lot to me!
Getting consistent here is a very high quality fly fishing game indeed. Catching a 5KG Snakehead off the front of my boat is really quite something special. Doing it on your own is some seriously good fishing. I suspect that Snakehead might be quite intelligent but that’s definitely information for another FP.
So I have Richard again tomorrow for his last day. He’s had a few good fish in the boat last week. I last had him here at the very beginning of Covid lockdowns – we were down the lake, the world had shut and we didn’t know it! Then I have a day of Zoom casting lessons and a quick town supplies trip. And then a couple of days of fishing with the Tasmanian lads who are also visiting and fun to be with. I may or may not be allowed to make a shot myself then. We shall see! And next weekend a triathlon! Busy busy busy!!!
Quite a few fresh babies around at the moment by the way. Richard had shots at around 30 sets in the past week. Less free-riser activity on the lake, but that should happen quite soon – and everyone has caught and landed free-risers. Tassie George has also had many inspections from Gourami but no eats! He wants one! It’s good fishing right now.
Have a nice Sunday!
Cheers, Paul