Said Al Rawahi grew up in the east-midlands in the UK, where he pursued a Masters in Business Tourism Management from Oxford Brookes University. As a child he was fascinated with marine life, spending most of his holidays participating in watersports activities including fishing. After completing his schooling, he returned to Oman to put his education into practice.
Born in South Africa, Brandon King grew up fishing, and at 18, started his first job as a fishing guide in a lodge in Mozambique. From there he moved on to work in some of the most exclusive fishing lodges around the world as both a fly and conventional fishing guide.
Clare King grew up in the UK’s countryside and has been fishing for as long as she can remember. She went to university in Florida where her love of salt water fishing began. Once back in the UK, she started working in London but continued to travel the world to fish as often as she could. It was on a solo fishing trip to Madagascar that she met Brandon, who was her guide for the week and the rest, as they say, is history.
Brandon and Clare were looking for a destination to start a fly fishing company; somewhere undiscovered in the fly fishing world. Oman was their first choice and they travelled to Muscat as tourists and spent six weeks fishing their way down the coast to Salalah, camping along the way. When they returned to Muscat, one of their friends introduced them to Said. As luck would have it, the trio found that they shared a passion for fishing and that their enthusiasm for their vision matched. Over a long night of discussions and many cups of tea, Arabian Fly Sport Fishing went from a dream to a reality.
Here are excerpts from the interview…
What makes Oman an ideal location to set up a guided fishing tour business?
No where is ideal, there are procedures to follow and laws to abide by. It took us over a year to get up and running. I’d say Oman is ideal for us as a family because we love the country and the people here. The marina in Salalah is a fantastic place to call home; safe for our children and our clients; and means we have our greatest passion right on our door step. The fishing is fantastic and very different to anywhere else in the world.
What kind of fish is Oman popular for?
Oman is the only destination in the world where you can sight cast to a fish called Trachinotus Africanus, or Permit as we call them – the very top fish on any saltwater fly fisherman/woman’s list. There were three species of Permit around the world that could consistently be targeted – Atlantic or Falcatus, Indo Pacific and Anak – until we started Arabian Fly. The Africanus was a known species but there was nowhere that offered the opportunity to target them sight fishing on fly consistently. It took us a year to work out how to catch them on fly but it was worth all the blood, sweat and tears. We now offer our clients a unique opportunity to target these fish.
What services does Arabian Fly Sport Fishing offer?
We offer two types of fishing, fly and conventional. We run a small 24ft fly fishing boat for inshore and some offshore fishing, as well as a 30ft deep sea boat fully kitted for trolling big game. As a company we organise everything for our clients from the minute they land; so we book their hotels, transfers, fishing and any land tours or activities they want for their non-fishing family or friends.
What are some of the conservation measures you all take3?
We have two tagging projects on the go, one for Permit and one for Marlin. We work closely with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to tackle illegal nets. For every client that visits us, we donate money to Environmental Society Oman to support their efforts in protecting the marine life in Omani waters. We also do beach clean ups throughout the season.
Tell us about the Permit Tagging Project.
When we land a Permit we insert a ‘tag’ into their back. It’s similar to the T-shaped plastic tag used to attach the price tag on clothing. This tag has a unique number, our email and telephone number on it. We record the date, weight, length, coordinates of each fish. If the fish is recaptured by us or possibly a commercial fisherman, we can compare the data between the two dates the fish was caught. This gives us information on their growth rate, where and how far they travel, etc.