April first, opening day of trout season in New York state can be somewhat of a big deal, especially in the Catskills with all the fishing history and traditions. Is it bigger than a Stones concert? Yeah no. Do the non-fishers even notice? Maybe. The local newspaper probably had a back page article about it that some glanced at as they flipped through the pages looking for information on baseball's opener. While out on errands they may have noticed a few guys standing in the river. Maybe not. If opening day falls on a weekday, it's a soft opening; Saturday draws the numbers, and then the non-fishers would notice a handful of cars lined up next to a well known pool for the traditional 'First Cast' where a politician or dignitary throws out the first fly as a bundled-up, coffee cup holding audience stands off to the side behind the local paper's camera crew. SLP is never mentioned.

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Usually I would be fly fishing for Sea trout in Sweden now. But no, the Covid situation again is completely out of control making it nearly impossible to well organize any hosted fly fishing trips within Europe.

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It's turning into another strange spring. I was looking forward to the end of the smallmouth spawn over the next week or so, I've some new streamers to test on the hungry post spawn fish. But that might not work out as planned after all.

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I have been doing last fixing before snow is gone and reindeer are back in the wild. So it means driving with snowmobile and working on snow, I found some areas where we have about 1 meters snow still but it should be gone fast now when we have wind and almost +10 celsius, where sun can do it macig it was +18 celsius. I have noticed that when watching movies or tv anyhow, I do like to watch ”reality-tv” from Alaska etc. Anyway nature related programms.

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Yesterday was the opening day on the Danish salmon rivers. It’s always a big day with a bi-zillion fishers out and a few really big ones have been caught, including a 124cm/19kg giant from Varde River. The rule of thumb when fishing salmon in Denmark is to fish deep, almost tickling the salmon on the nose with the fly. I know it’s possible to rise a salmon to a small fly and an intermediate line and I think it’s mainly fishing pressure keeping the fish down.

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We’re just back from another great day on the river Dee, an unusually warm and sunny day where we saw a large number of sedge flies in flight and caught lots of fish. For me all my fish today were on dries, even though I only saw a few rises. Besides the fishing, the location is great for spotting wildlife such as otters, squirrels, herons, kingfishers, pheasants and we could hear a woodpecker though couldn’t spot it. The river is very low at the moment, so wading is easier than normal, although there were still a few moments that I thought I might end up taking a dunking as the stones on the river bed were very slippy with algae. The beat we picked today had a cold wind blowing initially against the flow, which then switched 180 degrees, meaning casting could be a little tricky, so it helps that James and I can cast a #3 easily in such conditions. The tricky wind meant I needed to practice curve casts to make sure the fly was drifting ahead of the leader.

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