Rompin Malaysia

[bugman]

Gents,
Has anyone done the Sailfishing expedition to Rompin in Malaysia.
We have a conference in Singapore late next March and I thought I might do 4 days in Rompin before the conference.
Doing research in the accommodation via the web is frightening with reviews averaging bag to appalling. Fishing websites say the sails turn up in march - even though september is peak.
So - has anyone been? Where did you stay? what boat did you use? Is march ok?
Brett

[Te Whiti]

Hi Brett,

Yeah I have been to Rompin for the Sails about 10 times. It's pretty special.
March is a borderline month, the monsoon season officially ends in March so you can have rough weather and the Sails do start to kick in later on in the year and you're right, best months are September and October, I always remembered very good experiences in October, but we've been in April and July and other months in between and caught them, but they're thicker in the later months.

We stayed at a couple of different places, the most often was the Rompin River Chalet. we preferred this, simply because it was on the river bend and did not require a taxi in the morning to get to the boat. It's a nice outlook for beers and dinner at the restaurant after fishing. When I say "nice", I mean nice by Kuala Rompin standards... : )

[MrNanks]

The less road travel in Malaysia the better.
We just got back from there and ended up taking video footage of their crazy driving and motorbike riding.
Have fun

[FisHard]

Thanks for the info. We are looking at going next year.

[aussiebasser]

We did Rompin in early July. I was in Kuala Lumpur on a work trip and my hosts arranged a day trip, leaving The Ritz Carlton in KL at about 3.45am and arriving back in KL at about 9.00pm. It was a huge day, the road trip was pretty good, once you get out of KL the traffic isn't as bad. We were on a fairly small boat and the gear wasn't top shelf. Most of the day was spent catching bait on jigs and drifting around. At about 4.00pm both live baits went off and we had three Sailfish jumping beside the boat. One was just free jumping. Our boat captain didn't speak any English, but that didn't seem to matter too much. We set off from the Rompin River Chalet and used one of their cabins to clean up in after the days fishing. I would not describe it as luxurious. Was it worth the trip.........
http://i653.photobucket.com/albums/uu255/aussiebasser/DSC_1210.jpg (http://s653.photobucket.com/user/aussiebasser/media/DSC_1210.jpg.html)
http://i653.photobucket.com/albums/uu255/aussiebasser/DSC_1217.jpg (http://s653.photobucket.com/user/aussiebasser/media/DSC_1217.jpg.html)

Hell Yes.

[bugman]

Thanks Dale,
It's definitely a destination we are planning but I think our timing my not be good. The monsoon season finished end of March - when we will be there. The sails are best in August - September - October - with March-April being really hit and miss.
We might ditch March and try for later in the tear. The accommodation does sound pretty ordinary no matter where you stay.
Thanks all for the info.
Brett

[Smithy]

Buggy, just tagged you on Facebook. Get onto Trent Irvine (Fly1), Scotty Miller (Mirage) and Steve Turner. They do it every year and have it fully sussed. They love it. One tip, pay the captain whatever money extra to go where he needs to go to get the most fish. The captains might be concerned about an extra $20 of fuel or something which is nothing to us to go where they really want to go but if you get the right guy he might bust the fleet with his own bait FADs and fishing different areas to the fleet etc. The SCGFC boys have usually been top dogs on the water compared to the rest of the fleet fishing 8kg and even taking over driving the boat on fish and stuff by the end. They rack up some great numbers. Great place to experiment with fly and teasing them into your livies with stick baits and poppers. Conversion rate is shocking on the hard bodies though.

[Camhawk88]

A bloke from up here just got back from there- check out his report and Vid:

http://www.fishingforumtownsville.com/kuala-rompin-sailfish-trip-t1631.html