When I was a young boy, my grandfather said that we would drive across the Middle East on a motorbike with a sidecar. He would drive and I would arm the machine gun. I believed him. I thought I’d be pretty handy with a machine gun.

A few years later I remember being absolutely enthralled by Robinson Crusoe — I still am. Being shipwrecked and living on a desert island. How wonderful. Just imagine how extraordinary the flats fly fishing would be!

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Three trips to the same tidal water.

The first was wind. A 10 weight and Martin Langlands' white smelt. Two sea-run browns at dusk, both after the evening tide had turned and started out. I talked about this last week.

The second had the better forecast. I turned up at midday, later than planned, to a light wind that was getting stronger and a tide coming in. This time I was fishing my HT 8 and 6 weights. Four swirls at streamers. Two fish rising in a lull. I spooked the first. The second got a long cast, bang on. It looked at the buzzer and left. Encouraging, but not as hoped.

Then the wind went east and a sludge started moving across the surface.

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Sunday saw the last championship event of the BFCC season and we had fantastic weather considering we're in October, twenty plus degrees C and enough sunshine to warrant putting sunscreen on. The distance casters who were competing would have appreciated more in the way of a consistent breeze, however you can't have everything. Though the conditions were good for accuracy and we had a new record with a score of 59 for the Veterans 80+ category – well done Mick.

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Squimps this week, aren't you lucky! Actually I might have written about squimps before, but even if I have, they're so good I don't mind doing them again.

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Last weekend was rain and poor weather. Saturday I was building fence again outside of farm. I'm useful idiot with all tools. Sunday morning we could do little at farm even in light rain. We are not made from sugar yet tools like drill, impulsive nailer etc are not huge friends with rain.

Monday we finished fences at farm with French helper. He did one gate and small finishing on Tuesday.

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When practicing your casting you probably want’s something at the end of your leader. Sometimes it should be a the flies you intend to fish with, with the hook bend cut off. But most of the time you probably go for just some “fluff”. It hurts much less to be hit by fluff. Hurts your rod less to be hit by fluff. Hurts your leader less to have some fluff attached.

If we start with casting without anything. You’ll soon crack the tip of your leader. The good thing is that it makes it much easier to do a whip crack with your cast. I’ve heard one teacher using this  as a teaching tool, if you hear a whip crack you’ve done something wrong. I’m not totally convinced this is a good idea. One reason being that casting without anything at the end of the reader feels a bit strange. I would say that I can feel a big difference when casting distance and the fluff is gone. It feels off. I have the idea that you want a balanced size of fluff. I don’t think a very small piece of fluff is an advantage in a distance competition. It is like it helps keep the line stable. So a bigger piece of fluff than you normally use can be worth experimenting with.

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