It has happened before and will happen again. You get forcing feeling that you need to go and fish certain place now or this evening. Even you thought that no fishing today. In this case everything started May 2015. Our Ruka-Kuusamo tourist association contacted me and ask if there is point to take journalist from Fisch & Fang magazine to make article about fishing in our area. I told them that yes, I think it is one of biggest fishing magazine in German speaking area, so please take them. And then they connected me and journalist to make fishing schedule to them from Monday to Friday, river fishing and lake fishing, dates would be around mid August.
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I have had a long-standing love affair with the clear limestone creeks and rivers of the Texas Hill Country for most of my life. Some of my earliest angling memories are of chasing white bass out of a beat up twelve foot Sears Gamefisher Jon boat on the Medina River with my dad. During my teenage years, I can't even begin to estimate how many hooks I put into the jaws of the local Largemouth Bass population on a private stretch of Red Bluff Creek. In hindsight, I can now readily admit that it is, in fact, the carte blanche access the owner gave me to that stretch of the Red Bluff that is probably more responsible for steering me clear of a "sinful" lifestyle than anything else.
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I am still in a heavy battle of daily physiotherapy in order to hopefully get my hand properly recovered at some point. At the moment it doesen't look too good. I am suffering some pain all day and night long. Also I am nowhere near to be able to make a fist or to use any serious grip to cast my fly rod. Luckily I don't know how to fail and thus WILL nearly fully recover!
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I spent two glorious nights camping in the ‘glades over the last weekend due to the traditional US Thanksgiving holiday. After meeting my familial responsibilities and stuffing myself with the requisite feast, I continued my journey south into the backcountry. One way to guarantee that no other human will cross your path is to take off on your journey into the waters after sunset.
There are precious few locations suitable for camping along the mangrove coast of SW Florida. Most of the popular ones are freestanding manmade platforms regulated by the National Park system. But there are miles of beaches along the shore of Florida Bay and a handful of other ground sites. My preference is to avoid the more popular locations as they can get rather boisterous around the holidays. It's not that I don’t like a party, it's just that sometimes I prefer the company of wild animals to that of inebriated humans.
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Next weekend here in KL we start the Malaysian fly fishing team which will have a fly casting contingent and we shall compete on a monthly basis. To make this more interesting we will publish and share results with other teams and even interested individuals. Bart is doing similar in the Netherlands and so we have been in contact throughout the process. Hopefully here in SE Asia we can really move Casting Sport forwards. I envisage teams in surrounding Asian countries who can give us some real as well as virtual competition.
Don’t expect too much over here in the way of distances! Any sort of distance here is a success in itself! However there is no question that Casting Sport makes you into the best caster that you’ll ever be and I look forward to seeing the progress made here by everyone involved.
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Recently I've been thinking a lot about how I explain things on video or while teaching. This naturally got me thinking about how fly fishing media explains stuff, and the more I read, watch or listen to the more I'm convinced that not all of it is really designed to help.
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Since some of our readers here regularly fishes Skjern River in Denmark, I thought I’d use this space to bring attention to some new rules for fishing in the system.
Some of the “recommendations” from previous years have now become rules and new rules regarding hook sizes and catch limits have been put into place.
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Competitors use their own trick. They are upstream from hole and kicking gravel (food) to hole and then dropping their nymph among gravel. That is how you try to get graylings more active and get more fish during competition. This is not working everywhere, you need to have certain kind of bottom and also careful how much you kick stuff. No-one likes if you get too much sand on your face. I think is forbidden nowadays in competitions to use this technique, at least in Finland. But this is not main issue now, I found out same thing earlier and then saw that some competitors was using similar technique but there is more behind the scene.
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The weather was kind to us for our trip to North Wales last weekend and we got a day’s fishing on the river Dee. Given it is mid-November and pretty cold, we still managed to find some rising grayling and Tracy winkled a few out on a size 16 Klinkhammer. I persevered on nymphs, although I must say my confidence in what I was doing was waning, especially as on our last visit I didn’t catch on this method, ending up copying Tracy’s dry fly set-up in order to catch some fish. This time, however, I did manage to eventually catch some grayling before I got the urge to swap methods.
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Fair to say we caught a lot of fine pike last week. Several big ones included!
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A few weeks back I pitilessly needled a fishing friend for his unconscious reaction of lifting his flyrod when attempting to set the hook into the case-hardened mouths of small tarpon. It is a habit he has ingrained from years of trout fishing, and one that is unbelievably ineffective to the uninitiated.
Once the flexible rod is introduced into the equation it doesn’t matter how many times you “sock it to ‘em” – the rod/line system just absorbs the jabs and very little extra pressure is applied at the hook point. Meanwhile, you are actually helping the tarpon with realizing that whatever it just ate is not a tasty little morsel, but some strange throbbing alien thing. At that time the small tarpon goes ballistic, flying into a series of acrobatic jumps and head shakes that throw additional slack into the line. The results are predictable: the fly is flung free and the tarpon swims off to calm down and wonders what the heck that was all about!
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I'm often asked to describe the Sexyloops Hot Torpedo action, ie "what's it like?" And that's a very good question indeed. To answer this let me explain the rods that I have particularly enjoyed fishing and casting with in the past. There are quite a few and I'm sure you'll be familiar with some or all of them: Loomis IMX, Scott STS, The Sage XP, Sage TCR (not the 5, but the 4, 6 and 8). These were the rods that I used for many years. In fact the Loomis IMX was the blank that I spent my University allowance on, before dropping out and heading out to New Zealand!
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Life has a very funny way of adding and subtracting things out of your current circumstances that don't necessarily fit the need of the moment. Then, without warning dropping them back in with the sole intent of seeing how you'll react. After 12 years in product development in the fishing rod industry, I decided to sell my business in 2008 and focus on being a husband, and more importantly a new father. I was perfectly happy (or so I thought), not doing ANYTHING whatsoever related to angling. One day about a year and a half ago my then 8 year old decided he wanted to learn how to fish. We started out with spinning gear but very quickly graduated to the fly rod. During the process of teaching him to cast, something reignited a spark in me to pick up the long rod again. I found myself going out in the yard in the evenings, for no other reason than to watch the loop unroll from the tip of the rod. It was a strange feeling at first because I hadn't picked up a fly rod since October of 2010.
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Classic salmon are things of great beauty, history and tradition, all of which I love and have a great interest in. I love flies with history, which is one of the reasons I have a great interest in the North Country style of trout flies, which I’ve written about many times.
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You should fish around rocks and stones. End of currents and starts are good spots to fish. Also remember to fish mirrors. Don’t forget to fish edge of the streams. Also fishes might be under the bank or if there is branches making cover over the river, under those might be nice surprise fishes. Deeper spots gives bigger fishes. And sometimes you find fishes from heavy current. And where currents meets or there is brook coming to river. Have you heard or read all this from somewhere? I have. When I started fly fishing, I read all the books available and all of them where telling these things. And those things are true but if you can’t read the current and water environment at the time it won’t help you at all to know those things.
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We’ve not been up to much lately, finishing work when it’s already dark limits our fishing and casting activities somewhat – I’m not a fan of this time of year. We did manage a day on the Dee last week and it was fantastic to find rising grayling in a shallow, easily waded glide. We took turns presenting small klinks in a stretch of water that was no more than 150m long, as outside of this area we didn’t see any rises at all. We both managed lots of takes and quite a few fish, nothing big but good fun none the less. Tracy limited her fishing to maybe just 30 minutes as she’s determined to rid herself of the tennis elbow that’s been plaguing her for some time now, this means no casting practice for the remainder of the year.
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Our past week was as simple as that, just brilliant. We caught many fine fish and had a hell of a great time in German Pike-land.
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I spent another day in a canoe flyfishing in the Everglades mangrove environment, this time solo. I was tempted to say I was in the back country, but the area I sampled would more accurately be described as “front country.” It a tough call as I got access to my intended fishing grounds by launching in the back.
Although you would never guess it by the weather, the wildlife knows the season has changed, and they are acting accordingly. After rounding just about every blind corner I spooked huge flocks of wading birds that have migrated south for the winter. It made me laugh that many of the areas that I frequent are reserved for non-motorized craft. One of the reasons for this restriction is so the wildlife is not bothered by the noise. The question arose: if these birds flee from me as I quietly paddle my canoe, at a distance hundreds of yards away, how could the sound of a small motor bother them any more? Don’t read this as I am complaining… I personally appreciate the quiet myself and love the fact that few other anglers are willing to put in the work necessary to get there.
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Here is a day this week... zoomed down the lake for 50 mins flat out. Went looking for babies. Found three sets. First set babies were large and chased the fly before the adult got a glimpse. Second set I took a difficult shot that I thought was perfect but the light was poor and I could’t see the reaction or lack of. Third set spooked at the sound of the approaching thruster motor. In between I found a few patchy free-rising Snakehead but no shots made. Evening session I went chasing Gourami. Found two. One was a difficult shot - not a shot really - but I took it. Fish had gone. Other was an even more remote shot which I didn’t take and tried for a better position which didn’t materialise.
Thunder appeared and we fled but didn’t make it back. Torrential rain and lightning saw us shelter next to the shore for an hour or more and the eventual drive back was slow, dark, wet and sparked with lightning.
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"How do I get better at tying flies?" Practise!
Probably the most common question I get asked when tying at club nights, shows or through the YouTube channel. Unfortunately, my answer is rarely what the questioner is looking for. There aren't really any shortcuts-you need to practise, pay attention to what you're practising and be critical of your work.
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That’s the big question these days, isn’t? Paul uses hammocks in the jungle (when he’s not sleeping in the boat), and TZ uses the same hammocks.
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Have you ever had situation that you are fishing with dryfly and when you finally found one which is the One, it is really the only one in your box. Or that you don’t have any chemical stuff with you to get your dryfly back on shape. Or during the strike your fly get so wet that it doesn’t dry out during false cast. Well, few years ago I found solution to this from web. . I tried to find original video from youtube but I could only found ones which are less than 2 years old but you get idea from this one.
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Catching a lot of fish when nearly everyone does it, isn't special. But catching a lot of (big) fish when most anglers don't catch much if any fish, that usually asks for some serious skills. At the moment it seems like I pretty well learnt my lessons within the past 15 years of excessive fly fishing for pike on Rügen island (or if you like German Pike-land).
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After an enjoyable yet confounding trout trip, getting back into my comfort zone brought on a great sense of relief and satisfaction. To add to my amusement I was enjoined by an old friend who just happens to be a dedicated and accomplished trout angler. We have fished together for decades, most often casting flies from a canoe into far-off-the-beaten-path waters deep in the Everglades backcountry.
When we are not fishing we are about as opposite as two people can be. He is a business owner and an outspoken right-wing fan of politics. I am a left-leaning scientist who prefers to keep my political opinions to myself. Yet, we have found common ground that has flyfishing at the center.
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We had a nice week down in KL at the fly fishing show that was organised. I was there on Friday! Sorry for those of you expecting to see me on Saturday. I’m not sure what happened but I slept for 19hrs and woke up at 22.30 after the show! The only time anything like that has happened to me before was when I had my drinks spiked in the Congo. I don’t know if it was that or jet lag but it was very disappointing because I had a few demonstrations that I was looking forward to deliver.
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This week’s post is a slightly revised and updated version of the original, which I wrote and posted in October, 2007. It’s interesting to go back and see where I was many years ago, and how my thoughts on certain matters have changed or stayed the same. This piece remains largely unchanged, with a few rough edges rounded, and a post script added on a whim. Like fishing, I guess the only way to really improve at writing is to DO IT!
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For many, many years I did quite well with any normal desk lamp when tying flies. Sufficient light and well away from everything, so it didn’t interfere with the tying. I’m 44 now, and I’ve been making a point of still having 20-20 ninja vision for several years as I’ve seen my friends begin using readers.
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I avoided salmon fishing many years. The reason was that everyone told that it will take you on dark side of the moon and dominate your heart. Well it was true what they said even I can handle it pretty well. I did my first salmon fishing trip 10 years ago with a friend. It was blast even we didn’t get anything. I lost one about 10 meters before landing when hook cut down. And for some reason I buried the whole salmon fishing somewhere deep.
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It’s a sad day when another good friend and angler passes away. Scott Simmonds was a funny guy who always made me laugh. Scott was always ready to support fly fairs and BFCC Meetings and had recently re-joined the Club, joking with me that if he waited a few months he’d get it half-price as a ‘Senior’.
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