I was sitting at the lakeside smoking a cigarette, I was waiting for my next time on the belly boat. Then I saw a trout in the shallow water, not more than 10cm deep. What should a trout do there? And she was not even 5 meters away from me... okay get a rod and hurry! Tying a streamer on and go for it - but she didn't react at all. Damm... she disappear, but after a minute she was already back. Next try with the streamer but still no interest at all. So I changed the fly quickly, I found a big hopper in my box and running back to the water. No trout, no shaddow, game over...
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I was watching a video of my good friend, John Rasmussen, on the Ahrex YouTube-channel. John ties a Danish river sea trout pattern called Elveren (which in Danish can both the The Elf and The 11 - in this case, The 11 as the fly caught an 11 pound sea trout on its first outing). It's a really nice pattern and I wanted to tie a few for myself (and a few for a friend).
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Paul asked if I would like to write to frontpage and tell about fishing in Finland. Why not? But I will write also about Sweden and Russia because, there are waters I’m fishing on. I was wondering what would be my starter to frontpage, but after Paul’s introduction, I thought that Varzina would be nice. It is one of finest if not best trout rivers in the world. I met Paul and Ashly, when they were going there and I had to reject Paul’s offer at helicopter field. That was 2016. Year 2020 we are organizing guiding/fishing week over there together.
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The second Jersey BFCC meeting is due to be held this weekend, with the casting competitions on Saturday. All the usual events will be cast; trout distance #5, trout distance #7, sea-trout distance ST27, single handed T38, salmon overhead S55, double handed T120 and trout accuracy. There was some concern over the availability of the club’s S55g outfit after the rod was broken during the Game Fair at the end of July, however it’s now been received back with a replacement section. Before every competition I have to check over all of the gear, this essentially means replacing the leaders (usually just the tippets), re-tying the fly (egg yarn), cleaning and lubing the lines as well as checking the rods for any issues – guides and joints etc. (the T120 requires a regular top-up of candle wax on one loose connection).
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I wanted to post a couple of videos today to finish up the manual and move on, but vodaphone doesn’t give me a personal hotspot here in Hungary, or Croatia or wherever it is I’m getting the signal. I’ll find a way this week.
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“Holy shit, Batman! Twenty years old!”
And what better way to celebrate than a campfire? I’m sitting out here at the Latohegy Mancamp, wearing a NZ Swannie, drinking Latohegy wine and thinking about the last 20 years! Wow - what a ride!!
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Sweden has a lot, I mean A LOT, of really good fishing waters. Stream, rivers, lakes, coastlines and an abundance of possibilities. Most people know this, but for me, two stand out because of their history and legendary status alone.
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It’s been a great series from Thomas, or TZ, as he often calls himself. Picking up the fly dressing reins and delivering a brand new series with his innovative approach to learning fly tying. I’ve certainly learned a few new tricks and enjoyed his FP’s and insight immensely. So thanks TZ!!
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For some reasons there are always some fly casting experts who love to point fingers on those fly fishermen not being experts in fly casting yet. Of course there are also expert fly fishermen who love to point out, that they are not good in fly casting, but do catch a lot of fish. I believe there are pretty good reasons to improve in both, fly fishing and fly casting.
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Ninety-two in the shade: why did that sound so familiar?
I was enduring the heat this weekend as I removed and resurfaced the woodwork on a used high-end canoe that I recently purchased. It was not particularly difficult or strenuous: unbolting, sanding, staining, and re-varnishing the few small pieces of actual wood in the boat generally would not be considered hard work. Yet, I was sweating profusely and struggling with occasional but painfully aggravating hand cramps. And this was in the full shade of my breezy back yard! Frequent stops and a surprising number of cold beers were employed but proved ineffective toward making what would seem an enjoyable weekend-day dawdle even close to comfortable.
As much as I wanted to take the canoe out the next day, to admire my handiwork, and savor the glide and responsiveness of a paddle craft so sexy I’m not sure I should be allowed to own it, I could not bring myself to venture out into the open sun. That pretty much sums up what the weather is like here in South Florida right now. It goes without saying I did not do any flyfishing either.
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Well I’m back in Hungary. Sorry I’m a bit behind on my emails and messages etc. It’s been two years since I’ve visited Latohegy and a bomb has hit it. Certainly I don’t remember leaving it this way. So it must have been a bomb... or a double tornado. Ive been cleaning for three days solid now and I’m getting a bit worried because my wife arrives in only seven.
Also I’ve been a bit slowed down. It was Peter’s fault. I had to have a few celebratory welcome home beers with him - after all, it would be rude not to. And there might have been a Palinka sharing moment (it’s a form of Hungarian antifreeze that is supposed to be good for you, but in what way. no one can remember). And then of course I had to see Zoli the Winemaker - big mistake. So I settled in to watch a movie; Schindler’s List, and thought about Brexit and then posted on Facebook....
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One shop in Germany had a flytying competition with awesome prices to win in spring, lucky me I got the first price what means a 3 day license for 2 persons in Austria at the river steyrische Salza. It was a long drive and it seems like we're lost somewhere in the mountains but it was worth it. The part of the river in that license was quite short but holds some nice pools with a nice amount of fish. I've fished with my favorite "heavy-as-hell" nymph to reach the bottom of the big pools and got some nice grayling...
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I'm once again at the (in)famous Møn Session. Møn Session is a gathering of flyifshers,held on the beautiful, Danish isle of Møn, which offers good fishing for both sea trout and brackish water pike. It's the fourth time my friends Gordon Henriksen and Frederik Lorentzen host this gathering.
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Las weekend Tracy and I attended the Hampshire country sports show where we ran a free to enter fly casting accuracy event on behalf of the BFCC. Due to the space available we were unable to set out the targets to the world championship specification, in fact we were missing one bullseye altogether and I suspect the nearest target was shorter than the minimum of 8 metres. That said, this close target proved the toughest to hit by far; there was a strong side wind blowing which played havoc with the leader – and this cast was mostly leader with maybe a metre and a half, or thereabouts, of fly line out of the tip.
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Right now we are fishing for Sea trout along the Danish coast of the Baltic sea. The summer 2018 (June - August) came along with record temperatures upto 26 degrees Celsius in the shallow water. Quite difficult conditions in order to catch Sea trout though.
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One year ago today I sat on my front porch, facing NW, as hurricane force winds from the SE tore leaves and branches from my yard’s hammock and sailed them like dust and paper airplanes down the street. As wonder filled my eyes, concern for my other home, the mangrove coast of the Everglades, worried my imagination. In the year since I have been wandering about down there, looking more than fishing. At first, the damage I saw, especially along the coast, was depressing and far worse than what I had first imagined possible. The truth is, quite a lot of what I had thought to be permanent and invincible was not, and it will never be the same. Well, at least not in my lifetime.
Over the last week, I made a couple trips in short succession, by boat, investigating a rather specific environment – where the freshwater from the summer rain flooded prairies above begins to mingle into the tidal influences from below and thus becomes brackish. It is a curious and wonderfully picturesque area but not one particularly great for fishing.
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I had an interesting experience last week. I took delivery of 50 Thunderbolt lines in a HOT orange colour. I know the taper very well - it's the old TCR taper from back in the days when fly line development wasn't "brick on a string". Back then (fifteen years ago) there were only two long carry WF lines available. One was the XXD or MED as we call them - as in Bruce's personal flyline taper, that he originally didn't put out to market because he didn't think "anyone else was good enough to cast them" - and yes I can kind of see why. The other was the TCR line which Jerry designed as a long (not quite as long) WF line with a very long rear taper. Another awesome caster, another awesome line.
Side by side, then as now, MED goes further down the tape, TCR is more fishable - less susceptible to differences in overhang and more Spey friendly. Another line came out a few years ago, based very much on the back of Sexyloops Shootouts and that is the Barrio 125. And also there is the RIO Comp Gold, which I had an input in as well, although unfortunately my input came in too late. Hey what can I say? I need to be sure to be sure to be sure.
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To me there is something about the lines of a well tied hairwing pattern that is both beautiful and fishy. The concept is well explored, but still lends itself to creative and attractive combinations of colors and materials. I think that is why this style of fly remains popular in modern steelheading. Every steelheader that I know enjoys tying and fishing them, especially in summer and fall.
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Did you hear about the great feather heist? This is the true story about a spectacular theft, old bird skins, the development of the theory of evolution, World War II and a young man.
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I certainly hope that you have found it by now. Basically we had a problem when the Hungarian app developer was struck by lightning and he and all of his codes went up in smoke. Fortunately the videos didn't! And while I have some plans to make another Sexyloops App, plans around Sexyloops take a while to mature. So to seize all options, what we have done is what I really wanted to do in the first place, which was to integrate the app videos with Sexyloops - although not quite in the way I had originally envisioned!
I believe that we have two more videos to upload into this rather comprehensive fly casting video library - or at least two more from the original series that is. Then when this has been done I will make copies available in HD as downloads for those who purchased the original App. Finding unique solutions to problems seems to have been the way of the last (almost) 20 years of Sexyloops! Sexyloops will be 20 years old in two weeks time by the way...
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We made the most of the last few summer days by going carp fishing at the weekend. The fish were visible on the surface and after peppering the lake with dog biscuits, the carp were slurping them down. A few casts and we both had several hooked, netted and released, though as usual there were also many misses and some odd attempts where the carp just nosed the fly away when they bungled the take.
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This is a quick FP from me today covering for Bernd who is busy teaching. I'm currently testing a new batch of Thunderbolt Lines that arrived this week. The Thunderbolt Taper, if you didn't know, is the old TCR taper from many years ago, that Jerry designed for Sage - it's basically a long belly WF line with a long rear taper. I've always liked this line, it didn't go quite as far as the MED in Shootouts, 15 years ago, but was certainly up there. All I've done is stiffen them up (and change the colours).
This line is slightly more fishable than the MED, in my opinion, because the MED has a compound front taper, with an increase in mass just behind the forward taper - Bruce tells me that this is to delay turnover at distance. I've fished the MED and XXD for years (same head - MED has longer running line). Spey-wise they work fine, but obviously the compound front taper is not the perfect shape when the weight is at the bottom of the D/V-loop. These two lines between them, however, have been a mainstay for me, for many years, and I used both extensively when testing both the HT6 and HT8.
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Statistically speaking, the first week of September marks the peak of hurricane season in Florida. There is a distinction however between named storms and those that actually strike land in Florida. Direct contact storms are much fewer but tend to stand out in memory. As for South Florida, one of the recent and most destructive ones was Andrew a bit early in mid-August of 1992. Small and compact it essentially burned a path right across the Everglades. But a bit more recently, Wilma happened sort of late at the end of October in 2005. It was a much larger storm, widespread and massively powerful. It also impacted the ‘Glades, but neither scored a direct hit on the mangrove zone. Last year Irma landed on September 10. So it fits the schedule. It stands out due to the fact it smacked the bottom of the Everglades like a dart to a bullseye.
Last week, right on schedule, the year’s first tropical wave was expected to wash across South Florida. At first, it was only given the status of “wave”, like a ripple in the atmosphere. We were warned to expect a lot of rain and some possible gale force winds.
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Launching today is the Sexyloops Essential Level Challenge, the exam and notes are downloadable as PDF documents at the bottom of this page. The purpose of this test is to test you as a flycaster and to give you flycasting challenges that will undoubtedly improve your fishing casting. Instructors and Casting Clubs can test this exam; it's best over water but it's also at their discretion. Certainly I go fishing in water, water has different properties to grass, and so you would be well advised to learn these casts over water as much as possible!
Even if you don't take the exam I'm sure that you will find the tasks very useful for structured practise sessions. Think of it as a game - it's very easy to identify what you can and cannot do. If you can perform the casts 90% of the time then you are probably ready to take the test, where you only have to make the casts work 1/3 of the time. Testing environment is aways harder than a practise environment.
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I like gadgets in general - and flyfishing gadgets are no exception. Have you ever tried having an idea, only to find out that someone's had the idea before and - *and* put it into production?
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