Last weekend was a US holiday, and I generally do not fish on national holidays. Even when driving to the ends of the earth to launch, or at least the end of the Florida mainland, on these weekends there are just too many people on the water. I believe in fishing according to the conditions: weather, tides, season, etc. But, no matter the natural conditions, holiday weekends bring out the masses, and I believe the fish respond accordingly. I know I do. It was a shame though, as the tide phase was really nice for a certain location I like to fish. I am sure it was just loaded… with boats. No thanks. I do not like fishing in crowds. Apparently, the holiday weekend warriors feel otherwise. It is almost like they prefer having others around.

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Last week I further studied asp!

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Like most rod builders, when I first entered the craft I became quickly and heavily infatuated with the decorative aspect of the craft. Decorative cross wraps, color change weaves, fancy handle inlays...I tried them all. One thing I noticed though, was that when I was on the water, I rarely if ever paid any attention to the fancy decorations that I spent hours producing. I made a conscious decision somewhere around 1998 that outside of a few single inlaid winds and trim bands, I would no longer engage in any significant amount of thread art.

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I’m late with my FP. I have good reason. I have been guiding past two days, long days with guests. Despite long days it was great two days. My guest had good experience about fly fishing, well he had never fished with one hand rod before. He had been fishing DH rod and only salmon and steelhead in Brittish Columbia. Now life is partly throwing him to our area and he wanted to learn grayling fishing and also how to fish with one hand rod.

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What if you’re fishing a stretch and come up on a deep pool, a weir pool, an under cut bank, a narrowing of the river with faster current? Then you need extra weight on the fly - on the fly, so to speak (#I’llfindmyownwayout).
There are ways of getting flies down - longer, thinner leaders, drifting before tightening up on the swing, sinking lines and of course weighted flies. As far as weighted flies go, the options have never been as good as they are now. There are so many different products made to add weight to the fly that you can customise more or less any fly to any specific situation.

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There’s currently a thread on casting heavy outfits on the board, as such I thought I’d share some of my observations. ‘Heavy’ in my book is perhaps #10 plus, but I wouldn’t argue if someone said heavy starts at #8. When saltwater fishing my Bonefishing outfit is a #7, this feels light enough to cast all day – not that I do cast it all day, in fact if I have 20 casts during a day’s Bonefishing it means that I’ve seen a lot of fish.

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