Viking Lars - Saturday, August 31, 2019
A shooting head system is great to fish with. It allows the fisherman to change line density within a matter of minutes, and also change to shorter or longer heads when and if needed. To further the flexibility of the system, you can also choose different shooting lines. They’re not fast and easy to change when fishing (unless you choose to carry an extra spool, but I’ve never really done that myself).
Mika Lappalainen - Friday, August 30, 2019
We kind of agree to have ”holiday” with Satu weeks ago. Destination was up to me, Satu always say when go fishing that your are the guide so you know where to go. We had three options each in Sweden. One about 500 km from home, another 650 km and one 800 km. We only had time from Thursday evening to Sunday including travelling. What would be your choose? Ours was the longest one obviously. Reason was simple, great waters, good friend and not so many fisherman around for sure. So we started to drive after finishing my last week FP on Thursday evening, 21.15 Swedish time.
Tracy&James - Thursday, August 29, 2019
Fishing on the river Dee has been great this week. Lots of grayling and browns rising to take dry flies, some leaping out of the water and completely missing the fly, some not much bigger than the fly itself. I don’t know how many fish I missed or how many fish I caught, as after a dozen or so, I stopped counting. Initially I found that I was missing a lot of the takes and asked James for advice. He watched my technique and noticed that I was ‘over-reaching’ with my reach-mends, so that I had too much slack line that I wasn’t able to strip back quick enough. The line was then drifting under my rod tip as the water was running quite fast in places. I spent some time watching him and adjusted my technique; this was after I had missed three takes in five minutes and he had caught two fish in the same time, using the same fly and only being a few yards away from me.
Bernd Ziesche - Wednesday, August 28, 2019
All week long I was fly fishing for asp and teaching fly casting. Brilliant week for sure - lots of fine asp included.
Gary Meyer - Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Well, I’m not sure where this is going. I almost forgot to write a front page for this week, or rather for today as it is already Tuesday over there on the other side. My schedule has been a bit topsy-turvy of late and even though I knew today was a Monday (as I had a medical appointment) I sort of forgot that tomorrow is Tuesday. Having the day off and not thinking about going to work until tomorrow really made it feel like a Sunday. Anyway… a recent thread on SL has been bouncing around in the back of my mind. The thread is about tightening up the back cast. It is a topic that I have been thinking about, and working on, for quite a while. Accordingly, a common statement that I make in all my beginners classes is that “you cannot make a good (forward) cast without making a good back cast first”.
Paul Arden - Monday, August 26, 2019
That’s my annual triathlon with my sister over and done with. Tough this year. Very hot and I’m just not as fit as I would like to be. However before I started this race, I made the decision to make this the start of things to come and not the goal. Next year I’ll be 50 (I know I only look about 34 and so this will surprise you as much as it does me) and so with this in mind I plan to get thoroughly back into this particular adventure and race full Ironmans again next year. Michael, who I was fishing with last month in Malaysia, for his 50th set himself challenge to squat 500lbs, to deadlift 500lbs and to run a mile sub 5 minutes. That sounds like a pretty interesting and worthy 50th challenge to me! I’ve set myself the challenge of racing Ironman triathlons next year for mine.
Andy Dear - Sunday, August 25, 2019
Last week Jackson and I were taking a stroll down memory lane, browsing through some of his childhood pictures on my computer. Inadvertently mixed in with some of those were some photos from back in 2004 of the several trips I took to South Louisiana to fly fish for Redfish and Black Drum. I have some great memories that came off the deck of Captain Danny Ayo's skiff, and these photos were a not so subtle reminder of how vivid many of those memories really are 15 years later.
Mika Lappalainen - Friday, August 23, 2019
I have always liked August. Darkening evening and nights, waters are cooling but days are still mostly warm and sunny. In June there is often flood and waters are cold, and it is quite rare that you have any good hatches in the beginning of June. Hatches start normally after mid June but it can also be that waters are dropping and warming up, especially July is that kind of month. Fishing is good thru whole summer but August offers something macigal. Past two weeks provit.
Tracy&James - Thursday, August 22, 2019
Last weekend saw Tracy and I on a lovely beat of the River Test as guests of our friend Gilly Bate. Gilly, who recently passed the AAPGAI assessment, organises the fishing there in partnership with Fly Odyssey. The water was every bit as gin clear as the brochures say, with flowing ribbons of weed interspersed with gravel patches that were almost always occupied by a brown trout or a grayling. The beat itself comprised of the main river plus a couple of side channels, cut to supply water to the mill buildings, so more than enough water to keep a pair of anglers busy for the day.
Bernd Ziesche - Wednesday, August 21, 2019
A few days ago I published a new fly design. The Spinning Fly - a fly rotating around it's axis. The feedback was great and controversial.
Martyn White - Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Recently I've been tying a small box of North Country and Clyde style wets for myself. So I have been re-reading Edmonds and Lee's ‘Brook and River Trouting’ which I've been enjoying thoroughly. The book is thankfully now easily available thanks to a few companies doing reprints.
Paul Arden - Monday, August 19, 2019
Last week while I had a new guest here - Michael - and Tonio, we had a fucking big storm. Everyone had said goodnight but I knew a storm was coming and that we’d see each other again before long,, what I didn’t know was just how big. It was a storm of tree-breaking proportions.
Andy Dear - Sunday, August 18, 2019
In my opinion, nobody paints a more accurate picture through the written word, of what fly fishing should be, than John Gierach. He's insightful, emotional, witty, and most importantly relatable. I first discovered John's work over 20 years ago, and since then have digested much of what he's put out there for public consumption. To be honest, I don't think I've ever actually read a bad Gierach essay. There are however a few that for me stand out above the rest. One of those is from the 1988 publication, The View From Rat Lake entitled "The Fishing Car".
Viking Lars - Saturday, August 17, 2019
Before summer I wrote about the Skues-biography by Dr. Tony Hayter, which I thought was new (ut is from 2013, so in fact a few years old). The book is nothing short of exvcellent on all points, and much to my surprise, I found out that the same author had also written a Halford-biography, in 2002. I don't know how these books managed to slip past me. I don't read copious amounts of flyfishing literature, but I am quite fond of most of the historical stuff - mainly because it's enlightening to get a few glimpses of how far we've come in the last 125 years (or how not-far).
Mika Lappalainen - Friday, August 16, 2019
It has been great week for fishing. Conditions has been challenging now and then but it hasn’t make fishing bad. Some heavy rain showers but hatching is going on and dry fly fishing has been good. Sunday we had quests on our lake and we caught totally 5 rainbow trout, what is making me especially happy is that german kids had success. Monday I guided german gentleman on river which I know and I has been fishing but not lately. Tuesday we had rafting and fishing on Kitka river, long day and excellent fishing. Despite rain shower in the end guests were able to land nice 37 cm graylings with dry fly. Yesterday I had time to in the evening to go scout river little bit more. I had guiding evening and I knew that my guest don’t mind me fishing also because it is more like friend thing, so……. I decided to go river where I was on Monday.
Tracy&James - Thursday, August 15, 2019
Tracy and I are not long back from the BFCC meeting in Jersey, Channel Islands. There is a small group of casters there who are dedicated to fly casting sport and their results show how significant improvements can be made in a relatively short time – it’s great to have one of the Jersey Fly Fishers names written across a number of BFCC records. I know this will spur them on to more practice and more records in the future (we met up on the day after the competition to cast together).
Bernd Ziesche - Wednesday, August 14, 2019
It's hard to find some detailed proven information about asp behaviour. That is of course because that species of fish other than for us anglers yet isn't discovered to be a pretty interesting one.
Gary Meyer - Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Hell… the fact that I actually went fishing was different! That we went “out front” was different (for us). And that we fished out of a canoe was definitely different – at least compared to all the other folks who were crazy enough to go fishing out of Everglades National Park this past weekend. The last few weeks have been like living in a tropical rain forest. Of course, it is not unusual for it to rain in South Florida during the summer, but the weather of late has been crazy wet.
Martyn White - Monday, August 12, 2019
In my last FP (the Okinawa trip report) I only mentioned two of the three anglers. This was because the third rod made me think a lot about what people expect and the impact it can have on a trip. He spent a lot of the time complaining about how the island wasn't very fishy or how the flat was empty, which was in complete opposition to my experience of the fishing. I found it a bit perplexing and a little annoying. As the week went on I was running it over in my mind, but it wasn't until a conversation later in the week that everything really clicked.
Andy Dear - Sunday, August 11, 2019
In 2017, the fly fishing world lost one of it's most revered icons. Tom Morgan, former owner of R.L. Winston Rod Co. and founder of Tom Morgan Rodsmiths passed away two years ago this past June. Anyone who has ever had the privilege to lay hands on a Morgan fly rod knows all about the dedication to the highest level of craftsmanship and performance. There is however a much deeper level to Tom's story....one that we can all learn a valuable life lesson from.
Viking Lars - Saturday, August 10, 2019
Most fly fishers travel at some point in the course of their flyfishing life. Some travel far, some go on weekends in their home countries, some travel a lot, and some travel occasionally. Some move into a dingy on a jungle lake, but that's a bit of a different story.
Mika Lappalainen - Friday, August 9, 2019
It is coming on my dreams. I woke up in the early morning with these thoughts and thinking about coming trip. We still have one year to go before we take off and go back to Varzina. That year will be loooong one if it will keep going like this. Reason why it is kind of haunting me is that I know what to wait and I know what need to be improved for Satu but also for me. I didn’t know how to practise Satu with those kind of fishery. Grayling fishing is good and you get lot of contact and landings but you don’t get same kind of power than with trouts. After few nights I got it.
Tracy&James - Thursday, August 8, 2019
The casting competitions at this year’s Game Fair in Hatfield House, Hertfordshire were once again interrupted by the weather; a couple of the mornings were written off due to passing storms with the group decision made that waving conducting sticks about whilst we could see lightning flashes was perhaps not a great idea. This also allowed quite a few of us to shake off the morning grogginess caused by the previous night’s drinking. What’s undeniable is that fishing is having a tough time of competing with shooting and other country activities at the Game Fair. I think the attendance of those purely interested in fishing is still waning, and being as the number of people interested in the casting competitions is only a small fraction of this decreasing group, then it’s no wonder that we’re not seeing crowds of people watching anymore.
Bernd Ziesche - Wednesday, August 7, 2019
In the age of 8 years I became a big fan of Rapala wobblers. Ever since I have realized wobblers to often outfish many other sort of lures - our flies included. Combining both the pros of wobblers AND flies of course are resulting in the ultimate lure!?
Paul Arden - Monday, August 5, 2019
I’m in the middle of a one month fishing trip on the lake with non stop guests and friends. The fishing is normal, ie hard! Usually getting 4-6 money shots in the morning session and the occasional evening play. While I’ve been fishing all the time I haven’t had the rod in my hand very often! I did manage one morning session last week where I had three chases, one of which ate but missed the fly. But then everything came right the following day, with one cast, one fish!
Andy Dear - Sunday, August 4, 2019
My first trip to the Florida Keys took place way back in 2002. It seems like a lifetime ago, but the details of the trip remain as sharp and clear as if it were yesterday. Unfortunately, we had very windy conditions, and the fishing was less than stellar. The closest I came to laying hands on a fish that weekend, was watching the "pet" Tarpon roll inside the seawall at Bud & Mary's Marina in Islamorada
Martyn White - Saturday, August 3, 2019
Last week in Okinawa was a much needed break from the hectic life of Tokyo. I left on the 6 am flight on Monday, got a ferry to the island I like, had checked in to the guesthouse and made the 30 meter walk to the flats by noon. Wonderful stuff. It was my fifth trip to this island and as it's all DIY fishing I've been slowly building up a picture of where fishes best when. Pretty handy for my fishing mates as they didn't have to prospect so much.
Mika Lappalainen - Friday, August 2, 2019
Something similar was said 198?. And world was chancing forever. Every year there is more demands to take dams down. They are doing that in US, France and Sweden. Or if not daring down they are building fish ladders. There have been lot of talk in Finland around this issue past 6 or 7 years, but last week something big happened.