Last week Phil Blackmar and I discussed the mental aspect of sport, I was particularly interested in how Phil learned to deal with the pressure in his professional career as a professional golf player and what we can learn from this and apply to flycasting sport.

It’s not just about flycasting sport of course, and also applies to taking fishing shots, instructor exams and even dangerous road conditions – as it turns out.

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Life for some of us is like a random ride, taking opportunist twists in the route, distracted down more interesting looking side streets and attractive avenues, as they offer variety from the growing drudgery; new vistas to be discovered across pastures new!

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I first saw a deer hair bass bug in the fishing section of a Canadian Tire during a family holiday in my early teens. I hadn't been tying for that long at the time and the handful of divers and poppers I threw in the basket were the only fly fishing things I bought along with a clutch of soft plastics, moss bosses, top props and other conventional lures that just weren't available in rural Scotland in the early 1990s. At that time, I'd definitely tied a muddler but that was the extent of my deer hair experience, so I was fascinated by the stacked bugs and spent ages trying to work out how they got the different colours of hair to sit in bands and patches across the fly.

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We had a amazing trip to Sungai Tiang with Satu. Fishing was great and everything was nicely organized. That will be topic on next front pages. We are on our way to Perhentian Island. (Might be mistake for resort as all alcohol is included, policy could change after we leave). Fishing part is over and now is Satu's holiday part. We will have one more fishing day in KL, I think it will be pacu fishing.

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Years ago the Jet Stream line design hit the market. As far as I remember the first version had very long heads in the 70’-80’ range. They were designed by former World Champion James Chalmers. I had one, I really enjoyed casting it. It was I think the best long belly, full spey line I’ve ever cast. I haven’t cast many, though.

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James and I are currently on a fitness drive, building on the weight loss that we both achieved during our recent tropics trip. One of the 'jobs' James does immediately before heading to the airport is to weigh the cases to make sure they comply with the airlines limits. He does this by first weighing himself and then he holds a case and steps on the scales again whilst I read the digital display. Because of this we know exactly how much he weighed before we set off and, out of interest, he did a weigh-in a couple of days after we got back. As a result, we know he lost exactly 10kg over the course of the holiday. I guess wading for 8 hours a day whilst carrying back packs and rods, through shallow water, deeper water (with the occasional swim), sand, rocks and sometimes deep mud, with only ginger nut biscuits (plus a few sweets) and water for sustenance, will result in quite a dramatic weight loss. James has calculated that if we went bonefishing for eight months he would actually disappear, but I'm not sure that's quite right!

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