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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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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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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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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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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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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