It's quite important to be able to see, when you're tying flies. Have you ever tried tying blind folded? I have (yes, stupid things happen at fly tying gatherings late at night when you've have a beer and a wjisky too many). Basically you need proper lighting - you need good light and lots of it. In fact when I first thought I needed readers for tying the smallest flies, it turned out that I just needed more light to begin with. The readers did come eventually, but that's another story.
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We got two trainees from France last Sunday. I missed my FP last week, lot of snow and some reindeer work. From Monday it has been raining until this morning. So all the snow is gone and it could be even fishing day coming up. Water levels are really high almost like in spring. We see how it will go.
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Years ago I used to have a long distance relationship with a Dominican girl that lived in New Jersey. After about a year, we came to a point in the relationship where it was apparent that for the things to progress, one of us would have to make a geographic move to be closer to the other. Unfortunately she was unable to relocate due to the shared custody of a child with a former spouse. In one of my more colorful "filter-less" moments, I informed her that there was no way I was relocating to New Jersey where for 4-6 months out the year it was what I would consider to be a "frigid hell". She was a lovely person, but there's no amount of "lovely" that can take the place of a borderline tropical climate where you can fly fish for Redfish in shorts in January.....needless to say I am NOT married to a Dominican girl from New Jersey.
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A fill-in from me today; Bernd may be going into another total lockdown in Germany next week and is trying to organise some business for this week. So if you want to fish with one of the best anglers and instructors I know, and if it possible for you to get to see him, then be sure to get in touch.
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The weather is cooling off a bit and I'm turning my eye on the seabass again. They're around most of the year but fishing is better in the cooler months and inshore areas around Tokyo in summer aren't that pleasant with the humidity anyway.
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Here in the Malaysian Belum-Temenggor rainforest the Wet Season runs from November through January on a typical year and it pours down!! I’ve seen the lake rise 1 metre in 24 hrs and from the beginning to the end of the Wet Season there can be a 10m lake level rise. But that doesn’t mean it’s raining all the time. Usually it rains in the mid or late afternoon through until next morning. Sometimes, however, it does rain non-stop for a week!
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Despite the lack of competitions this year, due to the Covid situation, I’ve been continuing to practice my distance casting (as well as my all round casting I should add). With not having many specific events to train for this year, e.g. the BFCC season, the world championships, the Game Fair etc. all of which were cancelled, I’ve had the time to rebuild my casting stroke particularly my #5 weight distance one.
Looking back now I can see that I plateaued in trout distance some time back. At the only BFCC competition of the year, Devon in March before Covid got a hold in the UK, I did ok but still came away thinking that it was a missed opportunity to do much better. Sure, there was the excuse that the field we were casting in was a mud-bath which hampered body weight movement, gripped the lines and coated the rod rings in red clay soil. However, there was a good wind and I couldn’t help thinking about how far a truly great caster would have chucked on the same day.
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Last month I mentioned the Dalby Fly Tools "Glue Foot" in a front page. The "Glue Foot" is a precision machined magnetic foot that fits Zapa-A-Gap glue bottle (and probably more brands with similarly shaped bottles). Precision machining gives a tight fit and the stainless steel foot and magnetic bottom goes a very long way to help prevent tipping over your glue bottles.
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Mika is busy with reindeers today. As well as being a fishing guide he’s a reindeer farmer. I’m not sure how many others combine these two professions. As you can see from the PoD today he’s just had 30cm of snow. I suppose that means winter is coming.
Seasons are changing here too. This is build up time for the Wet Season where I am in Malaysia. This means we can get overcast days (highly usual here) and afternoon and evening storms. As I sit here in the boat at the moment, I can see a storm coming down the lake. Generally these are not the fierce midsummer storms that can overturn boats and knock over trees... but one never knows until it hits.
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Scars are like tattoos, but with better stories
---Unknown
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Bernd has access problems today so I’m putting up this week’s photo collage for him. I know Bernd has had a lot of cancellations again this week due to travel restrictions.
“I am captured in the middle of new corona actions every morning trying to work out what is allowed and what not.”
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What is a long-distance fishing cast? I think that it’s a nice round 100 feet (30m) with a #5 line (140 grains at 30’ excluding the level tip). A lot of anglers will say "you can't hook fish at those distances", but this isn't true. It's possible to hook AND land fish at great distances, remembering that a trout’s mouth is fairly soft, and if you maintain the tension, you can land them. A great fellow caster said to me that distance comes down to three main things. Tracking, line speed and tight loops, in that exact order of importance. Most anglers I see that want to cast far have one common issue, and that is a tracking fault. Tracking is the aerial view of the rod tip path during the casting stroke, and the back and forward casts must be 180 degrees from each other for a straight-line cast. With all else being equal, you will get parallel loops. Good tracking is essential if you would like to cast accurately, as well as throw a long way. Distance casting is more about focusing on the little details, which add up to the larger whole. Think of casting as ballet, gentle precise movements, like a Swiss watch. Your inner Arnie will only hinder your progress. You need to remember to work smarter and not harder! I will assume that you are an intermediate caster that can throw a reasonable distance, understands the variable arc, has fairly tight loops and can double haul and cast to around 65-70'.
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Well firstly, before I begin to answer this, there are various parts in the rod design process that I don’t do. I don’t design the shape of the carbon templates for example. I don’t pick the mandrel. I don’t decide which cloth we are going to use. And of course I don’t work in the factory!
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Recently I tied up a batch of stalking bugs for a friend who's been getting the same order every year since sometime in the 1990s. After I finished it I didn't sit down at the vice for almost 2 weeks.
It completely killed my motivation to tie, whether for myself or others. Previous to that I was tying a lot and putting out about 3 tying videos a week so at first I thought I had kind of burned out. But I don't think that's it, unlike many I thoroughly enjoy time at the vice. I even fairly enjoyed tying those stalking bugs, weird little things and not what I usually tie.
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Flies, that is - not fishing wet, even though that happens when you fall over, tour waders leak or you get caught in the rain with out a rain jacket. Fishing wet flies is an art as diffifult and refined as fishing dries or the upstream nymph in my opinion.
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Sunday we had picnic and fishing day at our lake. Great day but not much to tell about fishing, few perch and good time. Wednesday I had river guiding day, that was last for this season. Reindeer round up are starting and weather forecast is that there could be even 50 cm snow coming this weekend. So winter could be here fast.
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I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music.
---Eddie Van Halen
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Really tough today!
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I’m writing this in advance because a couple of friends are joining me for a few days and we intend to fish the far south of the lake. This is one of my many zones that I fish and the main reason I built the battleship (there are no islands down there suitable for camping in hammocks) and it’s too far for a day trip, taking about 2hrs by speed boat to reach.
I’m hoping that Malaysia and Singapore open borders but it seems unlikely at this point in time, so I have a very small local market for my Snakehead/Gourami trips and casting workshops. But I do have a slightly more friendly “locals rate” and we are coming into prime time, so if you are interested in having me put you in front of some fish, tuning up your casting shots, or even just renting one of my boats and having a go yourself, then drop me an email. It would be great to see you here!
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For this FP I thought I’d carry on with the same theme as I wrote about last week, i.e. the physics definition of the line that has been fly cast, and whether it actually matters. Now, getting the physics right is important if you have a genuine academic interest in explaining how a line rolls out. But does changing your hypothesis on how things work change how you cast or the outcome of your efforts as has been recently suggested on the board?
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Last Saturday I wrote an FP on how to get the best performance out of pre-tapered leaders. The FP was mainly about how I often see people buy a new leader and extend it immediately. If you want max performance in terms of turnover, this is not that way to do it. Then you use the leader straight out of the pack, and start putting on newe tippet when the level part is used up.
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I laughed to my friend during summer, when he had problems with wading without wading stick. He told me that he had started to use it during this summer when he felt that he is not sure about wading anymore. We talked about that he said that before he was fine but this summer he needed to have one. He is one year older than me and we laughed that I will need wading stick next year when reaching his age.
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Wolves at my door, wised up quick, turned here an' gone from on the go, seems the old folks who come up short.
Light Up The Sky---Van Halen II
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These days I am working 15 hours per day on Rügen island. It's all about Fly Fishing for pike! My main goal is to have every client catching pike. Yet my daily plans worked perfectly.
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Over the summer I heard a podcast about using a dropper fly while sight fishing carp. My initial thought was that I didn't like the idea. But I tried it as I don't like just dismissing things if I haven't tried them.
After deciding to try droppers, I fished them a lot over the last few months. I was out several times a week, on the river as with the teleworking and adjusted schedule I was able to get a few hours in before work when the weather allowed. So I feel I've given them a good testing, I'm still not sure it's a great idea most of the time.
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I thought this week I would talk about flies. Despite what many people may think, when they open my fly box, I actually believe that flies are often the most important detail in fly fishing, after all it is what the fish eat. Of course if you can’t put the fly in the right place then you’re not going to catch the fish; so I’m assuming that you have organised your casting skills appropriately. And that doesn’t necessarily mean long casts - because most people fish their flies at too great a distance. Anyway I’m not going to talk about that; I’m just going to talk about flies and why fish eat them.
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There is a saying amongst the scientific community where I work – “if you want a straight line then just make two measurements”. It is often said largely in jest, but sometimes it is used as a damning indictment of a lack of data or an extrapolation gone too far in a paper or other publication. It is also strongly linked with another trait that I’ve previously written about here, confirmation bias. It’s human nature not to seek out data that shoots down your own argument, but in science it’s vital that you leave your ego behind and search for the data that contradicts your hypothesis, because if you don’t do it, someone else most certainly will.
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I like using pre-made, tapered leaders and I do so for 90% of my fishing, I might modify them a little, but most I just use them as they are. There are a few specialty leaders I still tie myself. I used to tie all my leaders myself, but frankly, the market today is near-complete and the leaders are of excellent quality, and I'm so happy to get rid of the knots in the thicker parts of the leader, which tend to catch all sorts of unwanted stuff in and on the water.
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Autumn caught us. It comes like every year, sometimes earlier, sometimes later. It will come always. It is last season for fishing before winter is coming. Fishing can be best during autumn. There can be some hatching and graylings are eating like crazy. Misty mornings means often good fishing day.
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"Come with me on a trip into angling adventure we'll ride the ragged edge where the fish are big and wild..."
---Flip Pallot
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