Paul’s FP - Sungai Tiang

[Harps]

Very interesting!
That’s a lot of work to haul rafts upstream… but sounds like it’s worth it.

I’m curious about what the fish will eat and what food items are there naturally for them, especially the mahseer species- I know nothing about them!
Have you kicked over some rocks to look at what bug life is in the river?

Is it a common thing for fly anglers to take the time and look at what bugs may be on the bed and banks of new places they fish?

Harps

[Paul Arden]

Hi Harps!!

I’ve had a good look but not found much. There is a night time dun hatch. Size 20 yellow flies. Terrestrials of course. I forgot my sample net this time which annoys me. There are baitfish in the river but the Copper Mahseer are feeding on nymphs and dries. I didn’t see anything this time in aquatic flies such as sedges or duns. Ants are on the menu and come in all sizes. There are blowflies. Saw some dragonflies but where they appeared from I don’t know. There must be shrimp but I need the net. Possibly they are small.

Cheers, Paul

[Harps]

I’ve been looking for big info and reading a bit about the aquatic ecology of the Tiang River and it’s quite interesting. On a first and light review, between harvest, aquaculture, and habitat impacts, it still has an amazing and healthy diversity of fish. I’ll probably spend too much time looking through some of these references and reading papers.
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... e_Malaysia
It seems like it’d be a very interesting ecosystem to explore!

And semi-aquatic cockroaches… I can’t imagine.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/f ... mnmJ7xeS9w

[Paul Arden]

Hi Harps,

My information is that the river was almost wiped out due to exploitation and commercial fishing 7 years ago. Both from sports anglers and middle men paying the Orang Asli to net the river. It’s a bit complicated because the OA have rights to net the river, however the grey area is can people employ them to do this and then sell their catch to restaurants and pet shops? The fisheries turned a blind eye and there are some issues there that have a big question mark hanging over those too. Both species of Mahseer are fully protected in the park, unfortunately this protection is widely flouted.

Anyway it was shut by the State Park and the local OA really have got behind the idea of no-kill. To keep footfall at a minimum and to give the village an income it was proposed to me that I research it for fly fishing. So it’s been protected for 7 years. The first time I went up there with the Aslis they were surprised by the numbers of fish. The fish however were mostly small, the biggest being around a pound (of the copper Mahseer species). Now there are 2KG Tengas/Copper Mahseer in the river, two years on, and the average size has noticeably increased.

The park is very much behind projects that support conservation AND make a sustainable income for the OA. They prefer low impact, low footfall, higher returns and C&R FFing with international visitors is the perfect fit.

I see it as all the things we know FFing can bring all in one project. Malaysia can be complicated but it’s a great opportunity to both protect the river and give the Sungai Tiang village community a respectable business.

There are tigers there too. It really is the real deal as far as Malaysia goes.

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Cheers, Paul