The BFCC have now announced the first date in their fly casting diary, the now traditional early spring meeting in Cullompton, Devon. Tracy and I will be there, Tracy will be competing as normal, however I think I may be restricted to adjudicating etc. Although I didn’t cast last weekend, I did watch Tracy practice at our normal field. At one point I did pick up the rod to just make a suggestion – I immediately wish I hadn’t as I felt pain straight away (having induced tennis elbow the weekend before), this pain is still with me now. As such I definitely won’t be doing any distance practice and I’m conscious that it probably won’t be sensible to compete in Devon given that we fly out for a saltwater trip the next day. I normally start trying to hone my accuracy with a #7 between 40 and 80 feet (preferably in a stiff headwind) before a trip, but I doubt this is going to happen either.
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3 years I have been searching for the perfect fly line + leader + fly set up. I give it away for free, right now. ;) Oh, in no doubt this will help you to succeed in fly fishing for many other species of fish as well.
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I am tired of complaining about how climate change has thrown a wrench into my long-standing observations of fish migration patterns. I know many anglers, good anglers, who are newer at this than I am, and they do not seem to mind it anywhere as much. They simply go about their usual search until you find ‘em tactics. When they do, they fish the locations until things change, then they go off searching again. I guess I am just getting old and lazy. I should be thankful that once it was possible to decrypt patterns and that I enjoyed it while it lasted.
These past few weeks we here in South Florida enjoyed a long string of days where the air temperatures either reached or exceeded historical maximums. It was like a slice of summer was inserted into our normally coldest period of the winter.
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I moved away from Oregon in 2014, and after a crazy year in southern California, I wound up, thankfully, back in the state that has always felt like home to me – Montana. When I lived in Oregon, steelhead fishing was a huge part of my life, a true passion, and something that I dedicated countless hours and days to. From mid-July through late-November, it was nearly all-consuming. I called it the “summer run”, after the steelhead we fished for, and because of my own manic devotion to the pursuit. Even in winter we searched for steelhead with our flies. Twelve months a year.
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Last week we got to know a little bit about Geoff Mangum and the neuroscience based work he's doing with targeting and distance estimation. This week I would like to detail a concept Geoff uses to help with precise distance control on the putting green. It's called the "core putt", and I believe it may have some profound implications for distance control in fly casting as well.
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Paul posed an interesting challenge on the board the other day. Apparently the gourami of Paul’s jungle lake eat adult dragon flies. And apparently they like close imitations as they are careful inspectors. There are plenty of good adult damsel imitations out there, but it’s not always easy and straight forward to simply tie are larger one. Extended body flies pose some inherent problems.
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I spent lot of time to observe. It is teachable and our waters are clear so, it is possible. In some places is possible to be side on fish and see how it is reacting, when fly is coming. It is exciting but sometimes also it can be depressing because the guest can also see how nicely fly is going but no reaction from fish. In that case it could be wrong fly or wrong place to where fly has landed (stupid thing to say because it is going on water). I will give kind of formula how fish will take when it decide to do that. Is it waterproof, no of course not but it should give you idea about how fish moves.
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After my resounding thrashing at the last casting event held in Cumbria I decided it was time for a change to my competition casting style. Not just a tweak here and there this time, but a ground-up rebuild of my entire cast. This process started at the weekend – and it did not go well!
If you’re anything like me you’ll have loads of old fly lines knocking about, ones that you’ve retired because they’ve started to crack-up just behind the rear taper. Actually, if you’re like me these are likely to have the coating stripped to the core before the decision is made to ‘retire’ them. Anyway, these wrecked lines are perfect for making shooting-heads out of, and if you haven’t already done this I’d encourage you to chop off the damaged portion and replace it with mono backing.
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PLUS 10° Celsius, blue sky, low wind - all that in February, of course we travelled to Rügen island to fly fish for winter pike!
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I guess it is probably impolite to complain about nice weather? While the rest of the US braces for another cold front, where hundreds of millions will face a second life-threatening temperature drop, South Florida is experiencing almost summerlike conditions. I had to mow the freaking lawn today! I just looked ahead and the entire next week is predicted to have daily high temperatures in the 80s. Come on down and get a sunburn!
But seriously, for most of my life, this time of year (mid-February) was always the coldest period. This may seem very petty, but the patterns I have spent years, actually decades, deciphering now appear to have been a total waste of my time. I miss the predictable lull in fishing. Well, not the lull actually, but the orgy-like feasting with abandon that followed that low and celebrates the coming of spring is what I will miss. That did not happen last year, and it sure does not look like it will happen this year either.
So, on another note, have you ever tried to explain to the uninitiated why you find fly fishing so interesting?
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This is the quiet spell on my local water. At this time of year you can cover great expanses of water looking to find only one or two shots at parenting Snakehead in a day. And sometimes you won’t find any. Gourami and Jungle Perch are rarely, if at all, seen at the surface. And free-rising Snakehead are either simply not surfacing at all, or if they do, they surface once and not again.
This is also the hottest time of year. We came out of the Wet Season approximately one month ago and it hasn’t rained since, daytime temperatures can be as high as 38C. The water temperature is still below 30C however (28.9C this afternoon). Free-risers are mostly seen by me when the lake water temperature approaches 32C.
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Drive for show and putt for dough.
---Bobby Locke
It's true...just like in fly casting, maximizing power and speed to send the fly line off into the deep horizon is not only an impressive display of skill, and strength, its a ton of fun as well. But as we all know, under most angling situations, precision, accuracy, and touch are what puts hooks in the mouths of fish.
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There is one standard in the manufacture of fly fishing gear - and that’s the AFFTA (AFTM) standard for the rating of flylines. There is no standard for anything else. Maybe one - the sizing of reel feet and reel seats. I remember even when I began flyfishing over 25 years ago, some reels had an odd sized reel foot and it wouldn’t properly fit your rod. I’m not even sure if it was the reel or the reel seat.
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You are planning fishing trip, exploring internet and maps. Maybe reading forums and asking tips about certain waters in your coming destination. Maybe thinking about having guide for few days and then fishing by your own. You find guide and contact him/her and you tell what you like to have, but can you trust that it will be worth of money. You have had bad experience earlier when having guide and you are not sure if it will happen again. You want to have transparency and honesty with your guide even before your trip.
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Tracy and I revisited Millom in Cumbria at the weekend to take part in the open challenge casting competition organised by Lee of UK fly casting sport. The weather was forecast to be windy, even by Millom standards, as the tail end of a weakened hurricane Eric was passing through. It turned out that the wind was perfect for the casting order, not enough to hamper the backcast with the salmon overhead outfits that we started with, and then dropping throughout the day so not as to interfere with the ST27 and trout distance events. As such there were some super impressive distances cast, unfortunately not by me though.
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Winter, spring, sommer and autumn - I love them all. Somehow the next one always seems to become the best one at some point!?
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I call this time of year “show and tell” because I can take someone out and show them a ton of beautiful snook, but I will tell them their chances of getting one to eat are very small. Still, I can’t seem to stop torturing myself. I keep thinking that there has to be a secret to getting these exasperating fish to take my fly.
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The fishing is exceptionally tough at the moment. I mean it’s hard normally, but at the moment there are very very few shots. This is normal for this time of year, however I am starting to find the odd sets of babies. I had two fish eat a large sunk rabbit last week - I saw them both mouth the fly, but I failed to set the hook on either. I had a further one chase my popper but the babies got in there first - dammit!!!
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The U.S. Navy Seals have a mantra they live by when training complex skill sets like weapons drills and tactical movements. That saying is "slow is smooth and smooth is fast".
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Graeme Hird makes the tapered, braided leaders that Paul swears by for his jungle fishing for snake head and gourami. Being a bit of a leader nerd myself. I’ve used furled leaders for trout fishing (and still do on occasion, more later). Generally I find that braided and furled leaders pick up too much water, get soaked and spray excessively on the first false cast.
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It is that time of the winter that you are starting to plan your fishing trip for next summer. I will give short info about fishing licenses and those things. It looks like complicated but it is quite simple after all. (it was even more licences few years ago). I list some basic details and give you links if you need more info.
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It may come as a surprise to you, but I firmly believe that almost everyone can be a truly expert fly caster. There are exceptions to this I know, but these people really are extremely rare. All the very best casters in this world all have one thing in common; they all have practised their skills - and generally speaking, the better the caster is, the more he or she has practised.
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There is no straight in fly casting!
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I am just back from the Atlanta fly fishing show where I spent a very enjoyable two days wandering the show, attending seminars, watching others cast, and trying out some rods. It is a good thing I do not have to explain to most of y’all how much I enjoyed myself. I have given up trying when it comes to the folks who are not addicted to flyfishing.
Commuting to Atlanta is just at my limit when it comes to driving: about 10 hours. Originally, a friend who is an avid fly tier was going to join me, but he flipped the “disgruntled girlfriend” card, and I suddenly was going solo. That doubled my costs, but the real disadvantage was not being able to share the driving. Resorting to airlines was out of the question as Atlanta was hosting the NFL football Superbowl on the same weekend.
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Many people think I’m a little bit crazy and maybe I am just a little bit. I’ve pretty much managed to skip the whole rat race thing, although I’m trying to make a little bit of money at the moment - so that Ashly and I can buy a yacht and sail and fish around the world. However I’m not doing this at the expense of fishing; simply I’m focussing on fishing in places where I can actually make more of a living - while still of course fishing all the time.
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During my quest to figure out the secrets of the golf swing, I was very fortunate to be able to correspond with some very knowledgeable individuals. Several of these folks were ex-tour pros, who had actually put the advice they were giving me to the test under the rigors and pressure of tournament play. Even though most of the information they were sharing revolved around mechanics, from time to time they would touch on things that were a bit more enigmatic, but no less useful or meaningful to my pursuit. The one that still resonates with me the most almost 10 years later is the role of "intention".
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In March last year, I did a front page on two different damsel patterns (my own LCB Furled Damsel and the Arden Damsel). We’re experiencing sub-zero temps all around the clock these days in Denmark, so I’m not fishing at the moment. And so, I’m tying flies.
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June 2008, I had one week off from work (Finnish Army). I was tired after hard spring and start of summer. I was talking with my friend about that and he gave a great idea, go to Kuusamo for long weekend and fish and after that fish more. We had lodge (in fact army has lodge we could use ) so I bought idea and rent that lodge for few days. When driving to Kuusamo, I was living in Kajaani about 250 km from Kuusamo, I was rolling a dice if I would call to Satu or not. We had been chatting about 2 weeks and I was wondering if she would like to meet. I got right numbers and I gave a call.
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