ASeptember 2014: A relaxed flight of 12 hours was followed by a short stroll through Kuala Lumpur and night in a hotel to recover. The next day we (Richard, Philipp, Florian, Benedikt, Jens and me) were picked up for a bus transfer to Kuala Rompin.

Upon arrival we had a warm welcome from our GetAway-partners Anthony and Aziz who helped us settle in and told us about the fishing. To our surprise they also a German guy over there; Stephan a great guy from Bavaria who had lived in Malaysia for the last four years.

After the usual tackle preparation and a short night’s sleep we headed out to our fishing grounds the following morning. At first we had to catch some baitfish with Sabiki rigs and after another short run we arrived at the sailfish hot spot.

Some boats where already fishing but it took a while before the fishing got started. Suddenly you would see bending rods and jumping fish, hear catch reports on the VHF – it all got pretty hectic. On the second cast with a spinning rod a sailfish followed my popper and it didn’t last long before I heard “fish on” from the other end of the boat. Philipp had a good bend in his rod and on the end of the line there was an angry sailfish trying to get rid of the hooks.

From then on it was catch reports from all the boats at the end of the day we counted 20 sail within our group of six anglers – what a start! During an awesome supper with the finest seafood and a lot of TIGER beer the air was thick with the day’s fish stories. Everybody was really excited about the fighting power and the aerial displays of the sails.

It went on like a dream during the following days and in the end of the trip we had landed 70 sails, most of them caught on live bait and a few of them on spinning.

However, Kuala Rompin has a lot more to offer then just sailfish. During our seven days of fishing we tried a lot of different things, like popperfishing around several islands, flyfishing, light jigging with small jigs and casting for narrowbarred mackerels around the FADs.

We caught several queenfish, yellowdot trevallies, mackerels, big needlefish and several other species.

Philipp seemed to somehow attract the hard fighting cobias so he soon earned the nicknames “Dr. Cobia” and “Cobia Phil”. On his first day he caught a smaller cobia on livebait.

Two days later he followed up with a cobia in the 15-20 kilo range before he continued with an even bigger on popper! On the last day Jens could land a nice cobia, too – but it quite possible was due to the fact that he shared the boat with Cobia Phil that particular day…

Malaysia is definitely worth a visit. Nice boats, great people and flawless organization. Not forgetting the truly breathtaking fishery and awesome food – this adventure was indeed a very special experience. The date for one of next year’s groups is already fixed (05.-15.09.2015). If you are interested, don’t miss this one!

P.S. What does a group of crazy anglers do instead of waiting six hours at the airport? Go fishing of course! After the mandatory visit in a fishing tackle shop we went straight to a pay lake near town where we battled with some big fish; a pretty great way to kill some time!

Contact: Robert Balkow robert@getawaytours.eu phone: +49 (0)38305 183155 mobile: +49 (0)172 3017278 www.getawaytours.eu