Kiulu, Sabah home of the small but feisty kelah known locally as pelian. Just over an hour’s car ride from Kota Kinabalu (KK) airport, this small village has been a pioneer for a unique fish conservation system known as the Tagal system. This system splits the river into sections and labels each section with a different colour of either, green, yellow or red. Green zones allow local villagers to fish from it at anytime of the year, while fishing in yellow zones are only allowed at certain times which occur once every few years. However, red zones are designated conservation zones where locals are not allowed to fish from it at all. The upside to this is that catch and release anglers like us can obtain permits to fish in both yellow and red zones under the supervision of local guides like our guide Rushdi Lusi.
Having arranged the trip with Rushdi a few months prior, he picked us up from our hotel in KK early in the morning and headed straight to the first section of the river in Kiulu where we began our trek through the forest to reach the first spot. The beauty of coming to such places is not just the fishing but experiencing the full blessings of nature which came in the form of wild jackfruits. The sweet jackfruits helped buffer the disappointment of tough conditions which we were not expecting. The river had risen quite drastically which made the current exceptionally strong that not only made fishing difficult, but also made traversing the rough terrain even more difficult and dangerous.
After almost 2 hours of trekking and casting without any bites, we stopped for a quick lunch of instant noodles before heading on to a smaller stream. The main problem for us was that we were used to fishing deep pools, however the fishing here was mainly focussed on rapids which proved to be quite a learning curve.