This weekend, our good friend and fellow caster, Kevin from Jersey, has flown over to go fish the Welsh river Dee. We had plans to go to different beats every day and hopefully catch some stunning grayling. However sadly the weather has put an end to that hope. We have had heavy rain over the last week and the river is currently over 1 metre (double the height it’s been all summer), is coloured and running fast. More rain is coming in over the weekend so the river will continue to be unfishable tomorrow too.
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Part 2 of my still water go-to flies was about the Gammarus, because it’s literally everywhere. Something that’s literally everywhere is of course small fish. If there are trout, there are also small trout, stand to reason, and trout do eat small trout. Another bait fish is stickleback and they are also very common together with a few other species of small, silvery fish (of which I don’t know the English name).
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Mika is chasing reindeers in the snow this week. I’m just out from the jungle and back in town, getting supplies and heading back to the boat. Fishing is on!!
I do want to talk about the trail building course in Sungai Tiang but I don’t have the time to write this FP now because it will be a long one, that I’ll write over the next evenings.
The good news is that after the Wet Season, Sungai Tiang will be open to fly fishing C&R only. We have a lot to do between now and then of course. I’m looking forward to seeing some guests booking and the results of the work so far and the development of the project. I very much enjoy working with the Orang Asli. I now know which tree they use to make poison darts!! I’m not sure how useful this information will be to me, but it’s interesting none-the-less!!
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Not much been going on here this week. We're settling in to winter and the seabass fishing is getting good. Fishing was good on Monday and although I've not had any really big fish yet, they're starting to show up in reports. Encouraging!
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After I wrote about the two damsel nymphs I thought that I’d continue with a handful of my other go-to still water flies. And I’ve even brought in a guest writer, who for now shall remain a surprise. Today I’ll write about my preferred Gammarus imitation.
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This is a rather fast FP from me. I’ve been packing this weekend for a trip up to Sungai Tiang. The plan has been to build a small single file marked track along the True Right. This I’ve always felt important especially over the hill that we use as a shortcut that could be easily fallen down, and doing it properly takes some skills because when it rains it pours.
For those of you who have missed it, Sungai Tiang is a river (and village) in the North of the Belum rainforest. I was approached a few years ago to see if it would be a viable sports fishery for fly fishing, and visited it shortly after. After visiting I said yes, C&R fly only is a great project and I would help train the local indigenous peoples to be guides. Which I’ve been doing as and when the pandemic allows.
Some, in fact many of you, have also contributed to the project both with funds and tackle… thanks!! It’s great to be going back in. Weather and Covid has slowed things down considerably. But things are moving forward again and they plan to open end of the Wet Season ie beginning of February when the river is gin clear.
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Last year I wrote a Front Page about a friend of mine named Jared Ducote. Jared and I's friendship began through my search for a custom fishing lure painter to test some epoxy clearcoats I was developing for fishing lures. It just so happened he was based here in San Antonio, and through our collaborative effort on this resin we have become good friends.
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James and I have been discussing a potential trip to the Bahamas next Spring. Before the pandemic we would go the Bahamas every year. We have been reminiscing about the last trip in Spring 2019, where even though it was pretty windy, we had an amazing trip with lots of bones and some great stories about cudas and sharks. Our memories are enhanced by the fact we keep extensive notes of every day’s flats fishing.
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I suppose every fly fisher has a number of flies that she or he trusts and uses on a regular basis. The ones one would never be without. The vary of course depending on when and where you fish - and what you fish for.
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Quick one from me because our usual Friday FP writer is hunting a wolf. Now I don’t know how many other FFing publications have this sort of problem, but here at Sexyloops nothing is unusual when you have contributors from around the world. Mika’s life always springs up surprises however! So a quick round up on events that are happening my end.
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Japanese people often seem obsessed with seasonality, you'd be amazed how often people tell me that Japan has 4 seasons. Sometimes they even say it's a unique feature of Japan's weather! The thing is, it doesn't. It has 2; Hot/wet and cold/dry. There are about 2-3 days between them. Temperatures have been down towards single digits from up in the thirties last week. Which despite being a bit of a shock to the system, is good.
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Bernd has a group of ten students and is flat out teaching this and next week. Ashly and I are going fishing for a few days. I have a Zoom casting lesson on Thursday afternoon, so that gives us two morning sessions and a possible afternoon/evening. Evenings are a bit dodgy at the moment with the Wet Season fast approaching.
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I currently have two projects that I’m planning. One is a comprehensive teaching guide. I often read things like, “I was trying to teach such and such and nothing worked, in fact everything went downhill from there”. And it’s something we’ve all faced but there are ways to identify the hole before falling down it, and techniques to climb out the hole if you inadvertently find yourself in one.
That’s a big part of teaching, but equally important is what actually to teach specifically, and how exactly? None of the exams actually deal with this properly and it takes decades of experience to become a half-way good instructor. So I will start writing the outline for a Sexyloops teaching section (it won’t be front pages). Don’t hold your breath however; I need at least a week of doing nothing else to write it. And right now that’s not possible.
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This last week has seen the temperatures here in South Texas drop significantly, ushering in the first hint that Fall is on the way.
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As well as the overall records in the seven disciplines that are routinely cast at each BFCC event, there are also age related records, with two classes for juniors (under 14 and under 18) and senior classes for those who are 50 plus, 60 plus, 70 plus and 80 plus (if you’re still tournament casting in your eighties like Mike Marshall is). As such, even if the overall records look a bit daunting it still may be possible to get into the record list by beating the many age category bests. Looking back over the year, we’ve managed to hold five BFCC meetings spread across the country and had some great casting competitions. Records were broken (and re-broken) at all of the meetings this year.
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I was saddened to hear that Roy Christie died last week. I’m sure I first met Roy prior to Sexyloops. Quite a long time ago anyway. We’d often bump into each other at various Fly Fairs. A quite outstanding and innovative fly tyer and a conservationist as well. Roy attended at least one Scottish Meet. He once sent me a whole bunch of flies too, many of which I still have. Upside-down, back-to-front, inside-out! A kind man and an interesting mix of an anarchist and a gentleman!
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It has been busy week. There are so many things which needs to be done before winter. We have been fixing round up fences and making things ready at the farm. Round up season has started and tomorrow again we are back in the forest.
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Although I fish for carp year round, I usually expect things to have slowed down quite a bitby mid October. Certainly as the days get shorter the amount of good light is reduced which limits the sight fishing. Temperatures have usually dropped too, moving the carp to different parts of the river and slowing their metabolism.
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Through popular request on the Board, Way Yin will be this week’s special guest star.
I first met “Bubba” at a CLA Gamefair, more than a few years ago, where he was warming up his Spey casting at the beer tent. That year he took first prize in overhead DHD distance. And I think he may have come third in the Spey but my memory on these things can never be trusted.
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Back in the groove again. I’m hoping to have guests soon too. Covid restrictions have been lifted to allow interstate travel now but still no International guests at the moment. I really hope to have them before the year end, who knows? This is might be my favourite time of year on the lake and that is because we have Babies, Freerisers AND Gourami, all to chase.
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Laguna Salada is situated on the far southwestern edge of the Baffin Bay complex. Baffin has been and continues to be one of the premier locations in the world to catch record size Spotted Sea Trout on both Fly and conventional tackle. Although connected to the Upper Laguna Madre, Baffin Bay and its satellites, Alazan Bay, Cayo De Grullo, and Laguna Salada make up a very unique ecosystem unto themselves. Among other unique features, Baffin is notorious for its underwater rock formations formed by Serepulid worms thousands of years ago. It is these rock formations that are FAMOUS around here for destroying props and lower units on outboard motors.
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Last weekend, after the BFCC competition, Tracy and I had the opportunity to fish the River Test in Hampshire (many thanks for the invite Gilly!). This was a rare chance for us to sight fish as, however well we know the position of fish in the river Dee, from watching them rise, we can’t actually see the fish in there. We usually get our fix of sight fishing on our flats trips, but they haven’t happened in the last two years for obvious reasons – hopefully this will change in 2022. As such, the gin clear chalk stream water offered a perfect end to our weekend and the trout fishing season.
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Fishing nymphs under an indicator is far from new. There are a plethora of different indicators on the market and many of them are quite good. From regular float that’ll suspend a heavily weighted nymph at the desired depth to more subtle indicators, designed primarily to make even the most cautious of takes detectable. Years ago at the British Fly Festival, I picked up a couple of braided leaders. Nothing fancy about them, 9’ long, but they were bright orange.
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Last weekend we had exploring day. Original plan was to go to fish familiar waters but our trainee from Belgium wanted to go hiking in Oulanka national park and I had something to pick up from that direction so we combined everything. I had planned couple of year to check upper part of Oulanka river. Now I had just perfectly some time to do it and it was kind of on the way.
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I blanked on Monday. Not because I had made some choice to try and target a specimen fish to the exclusion of more available targets or anything like that. It was just a pure, unjustifiable blank.
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You may want to check your fly line and leader for the level of stretch and match your whole system to each species of fish you are planning to catch!
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5WT is the most popular trout fishing line weight in the US. Even if many of those lines are really 5.5 or 6WT! And it’s a rod I have been asked for countless times since we started manufacturing HT fly rods. A lot of work goes into Sexyloops rods. Sometimes as many as 9 prototypes that I see and there are many others that don’t make even this stage.
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"Well, there is nothing more classic and simple than a flat bottom skiff in wood or aluminum or glass. These boats would still rule if everybody was not in a such a great big fucking rush."
---Chris Morejohn, Founder and designer of Hells Bay Skiffs
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James and I have just got back from our last BFCC Meeting of 2021, we’re pleased that this was the club’s 5th meeting of the year after 2020 when we only managed to arrange one. Now today the predicted wind didn’t really appear, but the rain did – and it was persistent! From mid-morning, it started raining and I found that my waterproof trousers were not as water-resistant as I thought! Distance casting with damp pants is not quite as motivating as fishing with leaking waders – as James should know ;-)
Anyway, we managed to run through all seven events, and provided some amazing tuition as normal and finished early so we could all get dry. Huge thanks to all the instructors who supported our lead instructor Mark Surtees at all the BFCC Meetings during 2020. We couldn’t have run these meetings without them.
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Yes - that’s fly fishing. Fly fishing is the Mother of Rabbitholes, which has even more rabbit holes in. So many rabbit holes to disappear into, which might contain rabbit holes of their own. And from those there might even be a few more rabbit holes that branch out. There are so many rabbit holes that the tunnels can end up undermining your daily life. I don’t mean that in a negative way. I know several people who’ve become so immersed in fly fishing that they have given up “normal” day jobs to make fly fishing their full time career in some way or other.
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Sunday I had short fishing trip by myself. It was not easiest fishing, still somehow okay. It was grey and cloudy afternoon and some heavy blows now and then. I got few graylings and two side hit trout. I thought that it was last fishing day of the season and I will hang gears for wintertime.
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