Sailfish Flying Fish!
adventureFISHING
A Reel Adventure in Rompin, Malaysia “Wanna fish for Sailfish in Malaysia? Hell yes!!” By Leanne Dixon, Reel Adventures
WHILE WORKING WITH Toby Kemp as a deckhand aboard
After two days in Singapore we were picked up from our
his charter boat, Sanity, we had the privilege to host a team of
hotel by Dennis Lee one of our hosts for the trip and we
keen anglers from Singapore and Malaysia for a week of hard
were off, crossing the border into Johor, Malaysia. There is
core fishing and tackle testing for rod maker, Xzoga.
plenty of traffic across the border and it can take a while to
These boys came with a ton of gear to be put to the test on some hard fighting Kiwi kingfish and the local kings did not disappoint. After a week of fishing and hanging out with the boys, the time came for them to return home, but on the final night they surprised us with an invitation to join them the following
pass through, so be you need to be patient – something our excited bones would hardly allow! Our first stop was TST headquarters (The Season Tackle). We walked in and saw wall to wall rods and cabinets, filled with so much ‘bling’ it was fishing heaven. We met Leonard Lim, the GM of TST; he showed us some amazing innovations on their upcoming rods and wished us luck for the contest. We
year, in Rompin Malaysia, for the Royal Pahang International
were kitted out in our team uniforms, spooled our reels and
Billfish Challenge. We couldn’t be more excited and quickly
selected our rods from the huge Xzoga selection, ready for
said yes, a year of saving and planning began.
our first encounter with the sailfish of Rompin.
The sailfish in Malaysia had always been on my bucket list,
It was approximately a two hour drive from the Singapore/
however it seemed to take forever to roll around. Finally we
Malay to our final destination, Kuala Rompin, overlooking
had a reason to go, so we packed up our fishing gear and
the South China Sea. We went to a local restaurant to catch
headed for Malaysia with a quick stop in Singapore to catch
up with our skipper / captain Steven Chong while we waited
up with the rest of the team and be shown around some of
for the rest of the crew to arrive. It had been 12 months
the amazing tackle stores there.
since we had seen Steve in NZ and he was pretty excited us
8 www.nzfisher.co.nz