What an extraordinary 6 Nations rugby weekend! Rugby is one of those sports that if you grow up playing, then you enjoy watching when you are too old or sensible to play. I, like I’m sure many others, am less interested in seeing a particular team win than I am in seeing a great game played. I grew up playing no8, then moved to blind-side when I stopped growing taller. Wasn’t really fast enough off the mark to be an open-side, but that was my favourite position.

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We are waiting on rod tubes and components and then Andy is going to be in a tornado of his own. I’m looking forward to seeing this happen. As soon as we have supplies we will plan far enough ahead that we don’t run out. That’s always fun.

Over in Europe we are starting to get Spring orders for the Tortuga. So if you are after arguably the best fly rods in the galaxy then please get in touch!

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There really are just not enough hours in the day at the moment! Many of my Zoom students are coming out of hibernation. The good thing about the US clocks change is that instead of teaching flycasting using the stern floodlight at night, is that I can be up early in the morning, teaching during my sunrise. No wasps! I don’t know why wasps come out at night in the jungle but they do. It can be entertaining but sometimes I could do with a little bit less entertainment in my life.

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Last weekend was something we have never done before, at least this time of the season. Before Covid we use to have night over in Rovaniemi or if lucky even two nights. Afterwards it feels funny as before Covid you could actually find hotel room with decent price and even get one.
 
Now if you look prices in short notice in Rovaniemi, you have to pay easily 300e/night, which is double before Covid. So when we started to have idea having break, Rovaniemi was out from list, not only because price. Another reason was that we had no desire to spent our holiday with tourist.

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I recently was saked to help to design a fly casting challenge/competition. It should be used for a remote cup in Sweden, it should work for both beginners and offer something for more experienced casters. It was decided to be an accuracy challenge and introduce the caster a bit to the discipline. We settled for two hula hoops as targets, 60-80 centimetres in diameter. This choice was made since it is close enough to the real targets and is easy to obtain. I also decided to put the closest target at 10 meters and not 8 meters. This might be surprising to some people, especially those who have not done a round of accuracy targets. But I think that a target at 8 meters or closer to the caster is a hard cast.

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I’m flying to Honolulu but I’ll have to wait until Monday to test out my new soft-gaze on the local bonefish. I’ll be fishing then with Makani Christiansen who hosts Fly Fish Hawaii.  Not sure what we’ll be doing. I hope the joint military bases are fishing well. Makani served in the navy and has access to some beautiful wadeable beaches and inside-the-reef flats. But every place he’s taken me to, on foot or from the boat, on the base and off, has been great. 

I have been practicing the soft gaze in the park, by focusing on a distant point and looking for movement within a fixed wide window. So far what I observe is that out-of-pattern off-center movement immediately draws my eyes to its source. Could this be what I’m looking for? I’ll see (ha ha). 

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