Finally we have winter in here. Well we have had it since November but I mean cold weather, few days we had below -20 celsius and still around – 15. This is better for reindeer and we need to have this cold season. It should be longer but let’s see how it keep going. Even there is some changes in climate our average tempetarure has still been about same. It just means that if we have warm winter, summer will be cold. That we would have even decent summer we need to have cold winter or at least periods with cold. If rain average is staying same it might mean dry summer.
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Yesterday I had a very rare day, a casting session in almost perfect (for me anyway) conditions. When I say ‘perfect’ I mean for the outfits that I chose to cast – the ideal wind certainly changes for me depending on what I’m practicing with. For example, yesterday wouldn’t have been great for me with a #5 MED, but it was just about ideal for the salmon overhead (S55g).
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I have been teaching fly casting for about 25 years now. For the past 15 years I have been teaching nearly every week. I would like to share some reflections, now.
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In a word, the weather of late has been… frustrating. Some times too cold, other times windy, and then occasionally record breaking warm. The worst aspect has been the utter inability of the weather “experts” to predict conditions as close as 24 hours in the future.
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I’m often asked what religion I have - “um ah, atheist, Santa Claus, evolution, don’t really believe in Gods...” but it’s a conversation that doesn’t really go anywhere and I always feel that I’m coming across negatively, even if it can be quite a positive thing. It can be quite empowering for example - “taking back control”, something I’ve heard a lot recently - but it can be worrying for those hoping for immortality. And so I’ve decided to create a religion that’s more appropriate for people like me, or indeed just me.
This religion will be based around the Giant Gourami Gods. Not one Giant Gourami God - I’ve been looking into the religions quite extensively for this article and the more interesting ones have many Gods. The Romans and the Vikings for example - they would have been completely different people had they only had one God. Before Christianity arrived in Europe we also had many Gods. And I think this is more sensible position to take - many Gods makes more sense than one and it is a powerful position to have. “You have one God; I have twelve. If one of mine dies I still have eleven left!” Also, if you only have one God, then criticising him or her is a bit risky, but if you have twelve chances are they don’t get along all that well anyway.
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Those who have a why to live can bear with almost any how.
---Viktor Frankl
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Northern pike are an interesting species. They are for one, northern, and they are wide spread in Northern Europe where just about any body of freshwater (running or still) potentially can have pike in them. The very interesting part about this fish is that they are also able to live in brackish water, just as for instance perch are.
It’s a vulnerable species, though. They salinity tolerance is low and historically there has been many incidents with influx of high saline salt water to their habitats and the result is a near-collapse of the population.
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We had short holiday last weekend. After 3 groups on Friday we drove 500 km to Sweden. There is nice guesthouse by the river. I visited that place last winter with snowmobile group and I liked place a lot, nice stuff, good food and beautiful scenery. Guesthouse is located next to Lainio river, it is well-knowed, especially upper part (mountain part) for fishing. You can find big graylings, trout and salmon from upper part, best way to get there is helicopter. Lower part where guesthouse locate has great fishing also but it is not so ”legendary” than upper part.
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I’m filling in for James and Tracy this week. It’s Chinese New Year which means Malaysia has gone crazy! Don’t attempt to travel anywhere at this time of year because you won’t be able! Indeed if you do have to be somewhere then consider walking. It is a good time of year for fireworks however, so that’s something exciting.
Over on the Board we have some great discussions. This is because we have New Blood. The average life cycle of an active Board Member is somewhere between 5 and 8 years. A few people, such as myself and Lasse, are immortal. However immortality is pretty rare, even on Sexyloops and so it’s important that we have a regular influx of new members.
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All about Fly Fishing for me these days!
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My year end trip for 2019 was to a new-to-me river in Nagano prefecture. My mate Hiromiki, who came to Okinawa for his first saltwater trip with us in the summer invited me to join him and Igarashi-San for 3 days on the Sai river which has a good head of very nice wild browns and rainbows from stockings some decades ago.
I rarely fish for trout in Japan as I find it hard to pass by the carp, bass and snakehead that surround me. However, I was pretty excited to get away from Tokyo and fish in some nicer natural surroundings, with (I hoped) less fishing pressure and, of course, the fish. Fishing pressure in Japan is incredible, it's really hard to get just how much there is across to people who haven't fished here, but I hoped that the 3 hour drive would make a difference.
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Last year I started inquiring about a couple of things here on the lake; namely how to dispose of septic waste in an environmentally friendly way and also about an idea I had about giving a percentage of earnings off the lake to local causes such as “save the tigers” - a bit like Patagonia do with “1 (or 2%) for the planet”. As a result of those talks, I discovered that there is a river in the National Park that has been closed to fishing for some years but there is interest to open it as a sports fishery project with the Orang Asli peoples, mainly for the Red Mahseer that are local here. I’ve just spent my first two days fishing this river...
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Nobody Cares.....work harder.
---Cameron Hanes
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I love dry fly fishing of all kinds, and O *do* all kinds of dry fly fishing. I fish poppers for pike. I fish big foam flies for sea trout and I fish #22 midges for grayling. I’m certain that for most dry fly fishers it’s the visible aspect of it that makes it exciting, and it is for me too. There’s just nothing like seeing a trout rise slowly and confidently to sip down a dry fly, or a pike attack a popping popper with the intention to kill in the strike.
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It seems to be more or less like that. More you know, less you understand. It seems to be like that at least with two things, fishing (cracking the code) and woman’s logic. I know that someone might be offended but I often think that it is more how you read than what it is written. About woman’s logic I have bet with my friend, it has been going 20 years now. Winner will get dinner etc from looser. I don’t think either of us will have that, same go with cracking the code or fishing anyway.
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It’s about now that I start planning the casting events for the BFCC for the year. During 2020 I need to deconflict with a number of other activities including the UK Fly Casting Championship in June and the World’s in September. There are also other casting events that we might attend such as Bart’s meetings in Holland, the EWF and of course the Sexyloops gathering in Bosnia in September after the World’s.
We have already set the date for the first BFCC Meeting in Cullompton CC, Devon on Sunday 8th March. I also have the dates for the two shows we support, Sportfish in May and the Game Fair in July. However I have to wait to set up many of the other Meeting dates until the cricket and rugby clubs that we use as venues have set their fixtures; this normally happens in late January.
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Although I focused much more on smallmouth bass than normal this year - which will be the subject of my next FP- I'm still a massive fan of carp and like nothing more than turning trout anglers to the mud bones, and I had a good chance to play Palpatine at the start of the Christmas holidays. A couple of weeks ago at the club night out, I met Antonin from Switzerland. He's new to Japan, having just moved from Hong Kong where he'd been fishing for snakehead and tilapia, so a prime candidate to become a carp bum.
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Over the last few months I have had the privilege to work with a very dedicated student on almost a weekly basis. This flyfishing addict-to-be has come to the sport a bit later in life than optimal, but I expect they will easily make up for lost time with good old fashion “want-to”.
I hope the learning experience has been as rewarding for this student as it has been for me. And, I am not, in any way, referring to some sort of financial reward. Their journey has been so much fun, for me, that getting paid for my services has been the least of my concern. They possess a few extra challenges above those of most of my previous students, and therefor I had to up my game accordingly.
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Reading Andy’s excellent FP yesterday on his thoughts on fly fishing being a “craft”, reminded me of an interview I had some eight years ago when I was asked why I fly fished and I simply said “I don’t know!!” Quite frankly, while I know this may come as disturbing information to any non-flyfisher, I hadn’t realised that I needed a reason!
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Golf at best, is a bet....more than being a sport or a skill or a game, Golf is a bet.
---Alec Katzman
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Martyn wrote a nice FP on wet flies in November, and I must say that I generally agree with him. As far as brown trout and grayling go, I virtually never fish a traditional wet fly anymore, and when I do, it’s a deliberate choice to do, just to do it once in a while.
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It is mid winter now. It should be cold but instead it has been raining water in some days and then got about – 4 celsius. So everything is slippery and icy. Anyway it made me think about clothing not only in wintertime but especially in summer and what you put on under waders etc. Past few days I have seen so many youngters walking around with bare angles in the name of fashion, even it was – 15 celsius. Also guests have been wondering how I can survive just with two pullovers and leather jacket, and long johns and lederhosen.
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I’ve been known to write the odd geeky front page before now and this, unapologetically, is going to be another. If you don’t want to be transported back to the school class room I’d suggest you skip straight to the board or go back to Wednesday’s page where no doubt Bernd has posted lots of big fish pictures from the week. Once again my inspiration has come from a Facebook discussion, this time instigated by Mark Surtees. The original post was on the subject of measuring the rating of rods, however it soon went off track to discuss lines and their densities – something I’ve commented about previously on various forums, and worth a re-visit here.
In this post I’m going to show you (or remind you) how to measure the density of a fly line without resorting to running a micrometre over it, cutting it up or having to use any complex scientific equipment. In fact all you’ll need is a set of scales (the more precise the better) and a few bits and pieces that you’ll have knocking about the house already. You then have to trust in Archimedes and his 2000 plus year-old ‘eureka’ moment. Whatever marketing bollocks you may have read, there has not been a subsequent eureka moment that concluded the ‘original’ was the flawed ramblings of a drunken Greek dude (taking a bath in the middle of the day is surely to relieve kidney pain after a monster session on the red wine right?).
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Is, what I got during the last nights when chasing Zander in zero degrees Celsius at midnight! Yes, those nights kind of man me up, each of them, ;)
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On New Year’s Day, a fishing buddy joined me on a canoe trip into the far backcountry of the Everglades mangroves. He and I have fished together this way for around 25 years or something like that. He mentioned that he did the math a while back but I ignored him. Being reminded of how time passes swiftly is only interesting to you younger folks.
The local weather has possibly turned the corner into the winter pattern, but who can tell these days? In any case, the fish we target might also be mistaken because, as we expected, they have begun to occupy a location my friend and I have learned to stake out.
After that trip, I went home once again despondent, and looked over my notes. I have fished in that area, primarily during the winter season, fourteen times over the last few seasons. I can count on one hand how many large snook I have caught in there on fly.
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I’ve uploaded an SLTV episode; “20,000 days fly fishing”. There’s a bit about how I found myself in the jungle, how to make a Twisted Leader for Snakehead (thanks Qwek!) and using Torque Twist for placing the fly down first and bringing attention to it. This is really important for Giant Gourami particularly if the are “stumping” or in the middle of a termite fall. It’s also handy for trout too. I’ll make a proper teaching video of this later for the Casting Video Manual.
Here in Malaysia I’m starting to wonder if the Wet Season has ended prematurely (it hasn’t rained since before Xmas) or if it’s saving itself for an impressive deluge finale this month. Generally the Wet runs from November through to mid-Jan but, like almost everywhere else, the weather patterns the past few years have been noticeably different. Right now it should be raining every afternoon and hard. The lake is still 20ft below maximum level, which is pretty significant.
On the other hand the rivers are currently clear so it’s possible I might head up one in search of Mahseer. Every cloud has a silver lining…
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You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
---Frank Zappa
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I’ve always believed that when in doubt, fish with a fly that looks like something your targeted fish is used to eating. That can never be a bad decision, I think. Since 2008 (or there about - can’t actually remember the precise year), when asked about which flies to fish in Denmark for coastal sea trout by people travelling here, I’ve always just said: Fish the Pattegrisen (the Piglet). It’s immensely popular for many reasons, the first and most important of course being that it really is a very good fly.
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Mika our Friday contributor has some last minute guests at his reindeer farm and so I’m covering his FP. It must be quite something to live inside the Arctic Circle. Summers I could handle, but this time of year... well I think I’d find that tough.
Anyway 21 years ago when Sexyloops was six months old I realised that the only person bumping up the stats counter was me! And so over a period of about a week I wrote the Sexyloops Fly Casting Manual. Which was originally was seven very long pages. Six months after this one of my friends, Steve, chopped it up into about 50 bite-sized chunks.
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Happy New Year! Blwyddyn Newydd Dda! It’s a time for new resolutions and as normal, ours are to fish more, practice distance and accuracy fly casting more and travel more (obviously to go fishing). However there are some specific new resolutions that I have proposed to James…
We recently fished the welsh Dee and although the weather was lovely and the river appeared perfect for nymphing, neither of us caught anything. Well I hooked but lost a decent fish in a matter of seconds. So I reckon I need to learn more about French nymphing such as the need for perhaps heavier flies, squirmy worms, etc.
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Here is wishing everyone a happy and prosperous and fish-filled New Year!!!
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