Daily Cast Archive

Since getting back from the holiday, we have been working on the calendar for the BFCC and we now have a series of events for 2026.

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I have family down south in NZ. Always fun to visit, catch up on life, and maybe drag my son out for a fishing trip. The weather forecast was positive with somewhat low wind, day in fog to start. The day wasn't going to be warm but you can't always get everything in life. Plus activity warms you up at some point. Off we set, a bit of a journey in the car. Low fog was the order of the day.

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It’s been raining and the lake level has risen a few feet, maybe even a metre or more. This could/should be enough to trigger the Snakehead to spawn. I can’t remember a rise in water levels at this time of year before, so it’s definitely more of a maybe than a given. But I would be very surprised if we don’t actually see Snakehead babies appear within the next week, or days even. I’ve positioned the Battleship in a part of the lake that I haven’t fished since David was visiting back in January. I’ll fish here this week and then make a decision on where I want to be after that. It’s a nice change of scenery. This particular bay is also excellent for Gourami as well as Snakehead babies. It’s also a nice bay for swimming too and I certainly need to start training this skill properly again.

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It’s not by accident that tarpon fishing, like horseshoes, has several flavors of “close.” I learned a few new terms this past week. “Bitey,” or “getting bit,” and ‘jumping a fish” were already in my pocket, but now I have “chewy” and “chewed,” and “putting fish in the air.” Add all these to “looks,” “nods,” “leans,” and “follows” and you’ve pretty much got much of my migrating tarpon fishing experiences. I’ve had some connected successes, but not this week. I specialized in “looks.” I also got one “crouch” and another “swing and a miss.” In my defense, the weather was often rough, the viz poor and even the few bait guys “weren’t putting fish in the air.”

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Today, Thursday, we had a small competition. We planned it right after the one we had in April. We ended up with the same participants as the last time, we had two more registered but their car broke down on the way to the competition. That was sad as it would have been nice to catch up with Seppo and Stefan. And a couple of more casters in the competition wouldn’t have hurt. The weather hasn’t been on our side on the competition days. Today we had some wind in the start of the competition and later in the competition we had quite a strong wind. Always in a bad direction as the wind turned after every time we built or adjusted the course. And in the end of the competition we also got heavy rain.

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We have moved to Bovec, Julian Alps, and we are fishing Soca river.  We arrived on Monday under heavy rain. Tuesday morning was still grey and rain so we had nap after breakfast. When woke up it weather was starting to get better, no rain and little brighter weather, not sun, yet brighter.   We did shopping and fueled car and during that hour weather truly changed. Sun came behind clouds, or should I say clouds just disappeared. And we got hurry to go fishing.   Tuesday would "rehearsal" day as is totally new river and have to find spots etc. There was lot fishermen in area we planned to fish as rivers on lower part was unclear, you can't say muddy as there won't turn really muddy, water just isn't emerald green clear like crystal clear anymore. And level in down part had rose too much for fishing.

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This week’s fly, the Pop-lip, is a bit of a follow up on the siliclone from a few weeks ago. The main reason being I cleared out my bass box and realised I needed to replace a few.

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The start of the BFCC season is quite late this year, however the first event in Dodleston, Cheshire is on the horizon (on Sunday the 31st of May).  I've started up my practice for the competition events, but I seem to be a little behind the curve regarding my trout distance at the moment.  This is a bit frustrating as usually after an extended saltwater trip I'm casting pretty well, perhaps as you'd expect from casting almost every day for five weeks.  I remember the first time I ever cast over 120ft in the #5 event at the BFCC – it was two days after Tracy and I got back from a trip to Christmas Island.  Casting in the tropical winds really hones the double haul, and this is typically reflected on the casting court when it comes to distance events.

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was the time of the year when I'd been very busy. Christmas time. My children are getting older and holidays as a family are changing. They had their own ideas and wanted to go with their own friends. I'd been doing a lot of casting practice with Paul, and he'd suggested that the snakehead fishing was excellent if I had an opportunity, the quicker I could get up there the better. Both Paul and I knew that my casting, while a lot better, still had some flaws, particularly around accuracy. I knew the fish were hard. But nothing like catching up with someone you respect and appreciate in a spectacular location like the Malaysian jungle.

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I’ve mentioned it before; at this time of year in the jungle, bees find my socks irresistible. Although because I don’t wear socks nowadays – for the obvious reason – it is my bike shoes that are the next best thing. Bees adore them. They sneak in at first light, while I’m trying to sleep in the hammock, and try to fly off with my shoes.

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never made it back out to the beach this week. Hamstrung by appointments (I’ll spare you the organ recital) and a blown head gasket on the carro rojo, I was limited to dry practices. It’s probably just as well as I’ve had to prepare and pack for a five week trip east. My next stop is Sarasota where I’m gonna spend a few days fishing with my buddy Brian then to New York, Wyoming, New York, Florida then home.  I’ve been to the park every other day and things have been going well there. On Tuesday, I stumbled upon an unadvertised political stop of Tom Steyer’s gubernatorial campaign as he was being introduced  by Jane Fonda. I couldn’t get over her fabulous thatch of grey hair. Amazing. I voted for Steyer the next day. 

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I’ve touched on the idea that the biceps has an important role for the fly caster. Now I’ve picked up some new ideas here. How to improve the training of the biceps. If you let your arms hang to the side and externally rotate your arms, let the palm of your hands point forward, your arms will angled out from the body. This is called the carrying angle. This is an angle we don’t spend much time in. Many of us spend a lot of time in the complete opposite angle as we spend a lot of time in front of a computer. Having the arms by the side externally rotated in the “carrying position” is a good position to fully stretch the long head of the biceps muscle. This ties into the ability to rotate the forearm. And why do we want that? By restoring and having better movement in the chain we are less likely to get pain in the chain or help reduce pain if we have any. So this is something the fly caster wants to avoid or recover from pain in the arm from casting. And almost all casting we are doing we are working with the biceps in a shortened state so we are adding to the problem.

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We started from home Monday morning at 7 am and arrived to Ljubljana on Tuesday morning 5 am. You could say it is long way to the top if you want rocknroll. First two hour car drive to Rovaniemeltä, then 4 hour flight to Bergamo, italy. We didn't risk to get bus on time so we took later bus to Venice. While waiting we had late lunch and walk in huge mall. In Venice we had several hours stop which we spent in snack bar with beer. And then last leg which was 3 hours in bus.   We didn't sleep much and it was not good sleep, yet here we are. Tuesday our friend and guide picked us up from bus and we had short sleep in accommodation before picking up rental car and having breakfast. Tuesday was shopping and resting day after travelling. In evening we ended up to do wine tasting for Slovenian wine, from certain farm. Great day and evening.

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A simple job this week. The mylar floating minnow. It's a popular pattern here in Japan, especially a version called the Iwai minnow.

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James and I are back in the UK and are experiencing saltwater fishing withdrawal symptoms – so we are discussing options for Autumn – perhaps Maldives, Los Roques or Belize – though not Mexico after we heard about the 19% charge on fishing equipment when you arrive there. That would be ridiculously expensive for us so if that is what is happening there, then we are not going. Annoying as our previous trips to Mexico were amazing and it would have certainly been one of our top destinations if not for this weird tax.

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The places in New Zealand best known for trout fishing tend to be picture-postcard. Big trout in gin-clear water. Worth the trip. Inland often. Less appreciated, but also very good, are the lowland waters. They run from small tributaries up into larger river networks. They also reach the coast and tidal fisheries. Through autumn, winter, spring and summer, these areas can have an agribusiness-is-everything vibe. Farmers tend to be supportive of fishing. Views differ, but access still often holds up. Given how much rain New Zealand gets, the flows wash through, and the trout fishing is good.

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It’s been very interesting. This week I’ve been going through some Zoom videos with Nick and I have to say I think my teaching can be more focused/structured!! That’s been extremely useful actually. Recently my one-hour lessons have been going on for considerably longer, which is fine and my choice; I like the company! But that’s no good for duplication. So what I need to do is to drive the content back into one hour, imaginary bells and whistles, and then have the fishing chats after this tightly focused hour. I think that will be better. It will also be more practical for my students when replaying the lessons back to extract the drills, exercises and cues. I knew that working with Nick was going to improve my coaching/lessons. It was a bit unexpected to see this so quickly. It does make sense to check our work on a regular basis, and having a complete video of the lesson makes this possible. (Another good reason to record lessons!).

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Strange morning at the beach. I saw things I’d never seen before, possibly due to the big grunion run last night. Full moon. Big tide. I saw dark tails in close. I felt I must be hallucinating or that they were big globs of kelp rolling in the gentle surf. But I don’t think so. They definitely looked like tails but seemed attached to fish larger than I’m accustomed to seeing on our beaches and were moving parallel to the beach in opposition to the currents. They were up and down for a half hour or so and then disappeared. Could have been sharks or guitar fish, I suppose, or maybe white sea bass? Also the beach was littered with strange transparent three-lobed potato-chip looking things (see photo). Turns out they’re the chitinous sails of valella valella, “by the wind sailors,” a colony of specialized organisms comprising a far offshore sea-jelly that sometimes washes ashore in SoCal. The beds of big egg-bearing sand crabs weren’t on my beach yet even though I heard they were found on some beaches further south. I didn’t see any corbina nosing into the swash but there were some corbina-like swirls 30 feet out. The light was bad so I couldn’t see much below the surface. I saw a cormorant cruising in the same zone fishing, coming up with several silvery 6” long grunion which must have been packed in close. I caught a couple of small barred surf perch casting among them. I need to go back out there to try again. Probably Monday.

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I just saw a post from a physio mentioning that hotter weather means that some people get problems with swollen feet and legs. This made me think of white mans feet that happens in the jungle. The temperatur shift when going to the jungle is a bit more extreme so the people experience it here in Sweden during spring but the solution could work for both cases. The reason being that fluids cannot be transported away efficiently and the solution suggested is to strengthen the calves. 

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It is only one month before fishing season really starts here. May is long month, especially if there is no change for ice fishing like now. You can't do farm work as groung has frost and growing season hasn't start yet.   It is just waiting summer to come. Four years ago we had flights to Malaysia and we were getting ready for that. Two years ago we were already in Malaysia and spent this nonsense month there.

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