I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was looking into the possibilities of teaching fly casting via Zoom and having given a few lessons I’m now at the point where I’m ready to offer this as an option for developing flycasting skills. I have a couple of regular clients and I’m not looking for very many! I think realistically I can run with about ten students per week, so places are very limited!

Ideally you should be looking at six lessons. A one hour, one-to-one session, on Zoom once/week (but if you miss a week this is fine, it will roll over and it’s just the six lesson commitment that matters!) and during the week you can send me videos or ask advice and I will respond with advice and probably a video or two back at you!

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The aim of this series of articles is to share the information that I have been privileged to collect over the years from the great people I have fished with around the world. Everyone has something to offer, and I was inspired to write these articles by a friend who came carp fishing with me and sadly summed up his day “I’m not a very good fly fisherman”. He comes to all the casting days/nights, he has put in the hours, and he can cast very well. BUT..he has not done enough fly fishing, he was taking too long to unstring his rod and make the shot, getting caught in bushes on the backcast, the line getting caught around his feet, not being able to reposition his fly as the fish moved…frustration. Other friends who are great bass fisherman in stillwater lakes have struggled with trout fishing in rivers…their short game, line management, and repositioning were lacking.

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For almost 2 weeks we were facing ice age in Germany coming along with minus 15 Celsius. All my home waters (and many more) were safely covered under ice.

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Some years ago we had first public discourse about fishery in Finland. It was about how we have fucked up with some species and how some rivers (many) have been raped and dammed because electricity without fish ladder. It was important discourse in that time and now it is coming with some results. On that time there was saying ”people have that too much time”, it came from mouth of minister, who was responsible for fisheries. He said excatly that, people has too much time if they have time to come up with this kind of things and being concerned about fishery. He was right but in wrong time, we have too much time (well I do now). I have way too much time to think different kind of things about fishing and fishery. To be honest sometimes my thouhgts are going little bit out of line. Sorry people but today you will get tastery about that.

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I think most fly fishers have heard the quote above, and most probably know that it is (rightfully) attributed to G. S. Marryat. It's the end of winter (and hopefully also with a slow opening of the lockdown in sight), which means that I've been reading some books. In fact - winter and lockdown means that I've been reading more books than usual. And as usual, some books are better than others. In fact, I read this book twice, because the first time I didn't think it was particularly good, and yet, something kept lingering in the back of my head, so I made a cup of tea (yes, I'm even drinking tea now, and it seemed appropriate when reading about quinessential, English dry fly fishing) and started again.

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James and I are in lockdown for at least another three weeks, so we still can’t go fishing, though we can go casting. The new wiggle cast competition should be fun to practice. We thought it would be nice for those who aren’t necessarily into distance casting to have a go. I know it’s not really a fishing cast as you would never do so many wiggles when river fishing, though it may help with the control needed to make presentation casts. So far I’ve found this new competition enjoyable and practiced it with and without hauling. Non-hauled casting is something I practice regularly to improve my distance casting as well.

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