Last week I cancelled my fishing because of a horrendous storm which was disappointing. But at least I managed to make good inroads to a dry fly box I'm working on.
It did mean that I spent the whole week looking forward to making my first smallmouth foray of the year, especially as we've had almost a week of 20degree weather. I was super keen. Leaders tied, bag packed well before the usual night before scramble. Unfortunately, I ended up spending most of Monday morning on the fraud line with my bank as my card had been cloned. Another Monday's fishing knocked on the head. After moping around for a bit, I mustered enough motivation to take the rod for a walk down my local river. With the unseasonably warm weather the fish were feeding, but were still a bit less active than I expected. That said looking down from a bridge I could still see several fish with their tails up. Encouraging.
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Not every river is as easy to walk as a well groomed Southern English chalkstream. I’ll venture a guess that most are more difficult. A lot of rivers are hard, if not impossible to wade as well. Depth, soft bottom, slippery rocks - even weed can be a problem. And even approaching some rivers can be a problem with boggy, marshy meadows surrounding the it.
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Last week Paul was suprised that I was done with FP on Thursday. He said that I’m early, normally that it something what ladies says. Now I’m even more in time. It is Wednesday when doing this. I have reason for that. On Thursday I will pick up my daughter from 400 km, she will be with us over the weekend. She is coming with her boyfriend, let’s see what kind of snotty he is. He is her first boyfriend who is coming all to way here so he could be something. Weather start to go little bit warmer now and it is only -13 celsius. Forecast is that it will be from -2 to -5 during the weekend. So I thougt to make training area for casting. Weather seems to get better for casting practise.
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A little over a year ago, I wrote a piece titled "Perspectives" It detailed some ideas I've developed over the years about how I view the act fly fishing, and in a broader sense, fishing of any type. I opened the piece with a quote from my good mate Alec Katzman. Alec, aside from being a professional golfer, a semi-professional satirist, observer of life, and all around provocateur, is also gifted with the ability to see things from unique perspectives. Perhaps this is why we're such good friends is because we both share the ability to skirt the lunatic fringe when it comes to how we view our respective sports....and the world for that matter.
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For almost 2 weeks we were facing ice age in Germany coming along with minus 15 Celsius. All my home waters (and many more) were safely covered under ice.
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The aim of this series of articles is to share the information that I have been privileged to collect over the years from the great people I have fished with around the world. Everyone has something to offer, and I was inspired to write these articles by a friend who came carp fishing with me and sadly summed up his day “I’m not a very good fly fisherman”. He comes to all the casting days/nights, he has put in the hours, and he can cast very well. BUT..he has not done enough fly fishing, he was taking too long to unstring his rod and make the shot, getting caught in bushes on the backcast, the line getting caught around his feet, not being able to reposition his fly as the fish moved…frustration. Other friends who are great bass fisherman in stillwater lakes have struggled with trout fishing in rivers…their short game, line management, and repositioning were lacking.
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I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was looking into the possibilities of teaching fly casting via Zoom and having given a few lessons I’m now at the point where I’m ready to offer this as an option for developing flycasting skills. I have a couple of regular clients and I’m not looking for very many! I think realistically I can run with about ten students per week, so places are very limited!
Ideally you should be looking at six lessons. A one hour, one-to-one session, on Zoom once/week (but if you miss a week this is fine, it will roll over and it’s just the six lesson commitment that matters!) and during the week you can send me videos or ask advice and I will respond with advice and probably a video or two back at you!
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James and I are in lockdown for at least another three weeks, so we still can’t go fishing, though we can go casting. The new wiggle cast competition should be fun to practice. We thought it would be nice for those who aren’t necessarily into distance casting to have a go. I know it’s not really a fishing cast as you would never do so many wiggles when river fishing, though it may help with the control needed to make presentation casts. So far I’ve found this new competition enjoyable and practiced it with and without hauling. Non-hauled casting is something I practice regularly to improve my distance casting as well.
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I think most fly fishers have heard the quote above, and most probably know that it is (rightfully) attributed to G. S. Marryat. It's the end of winter (and hopefully also with a slow opening of the lockdown in sight), which means that I've been reading some books. In fact - winter and lockdown means that I've been reading more books than usual. And as usual, some books are better than others. In fact, I read this book twice, because the first time I didn't think it was particularly good, and yet, something kept lingering in the back of my head, so I made a cup of tea (yes, I'm even drinking tea now, and it seemed appropriate when reading about quinessential, English dry fly fishing) and started again.
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Some years ago we had first public discourse about fishery in Finland. It was about how we have fucked up with some species and how some rivers (many) have been raped and dammed because electricity without fish ladder. It was important discourse in that time and now it is coming with some results. On that time there was saying ”people have that too much time”, it came from mouth of minister, who was responsible for fisheries. He said excatly that, people has too much time if they have time to come up with this kind of things and being concerned about fishery. He was right but in wrong time, we have too much time (well I do now). I have way too much time to think different kind of things about fishing and fishery. To be honest sometimes my thouhgts are going little bit out of line. Sorry people but today you will get tastery about that.
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Rare if ever does the state of Texas make international news....but this week we did. We had an unusual arctic cold front push through that has blanketed the state in a thick layer of snow and ice, leaving many without power, water and heat.
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Many years ago a famous Austrian riverkeeper Hans Gebetsroither found a great way how to best dry silk fly lines for his clients after their fishing on his daily routine - castingwise. His trick: INVERTED loops in the back cast!
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Casting with your dominant hand can he hard enough. Why then would you make life harder and try and cast with your non dominant or less intelligent hand? It really depends on what sort of fishing you do.
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Now it’s my turn to deliver a late front page! A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was looking into giving online fly casting lessons via the Zoom platform. I’m still working on this and seeing what’s possible/practical but so far I’m very pleased. Obviously there are going to be some things that are going to be difficult to teach but when it comes to focussing on what the body should be doing (and after all this is the bit that we teach!) it can actually work very well.
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The entries into the PULD competition have dried up recently so I suspect it’s getting towards the point where Tracy and I should declare the winners and hand out the prizes. That said we’re both confident that we could improve our respective scores, and I’m desperate to join the elite group who have managed 40 metres plus (I’m a foot or so short at the moment). The competition has been an interesting one for me personally as it has forced me to change my pick-up from the one I would normally use in a distance event; picking the fly up from 75ft when you have only one back-cast is nowhere near enough. That said, going for too big a pick-up is equally bad (in my experience), as maintaining tension and shooting into the carry suffers. As such it’s about achieving the perfect compromise, something that I feel I’ve yet to achieve.
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I took the lead from Tim’s excellent page from Tuesday and decided to add a few thoughts of my own. I come from a different part of the world and don’t fish Kiribati on a regular basis :-). I do however fish the Scandinavian shorelines on a regular basis, and in many ways, we face the same conditions (except other fish and less heat). Wind is a near-constant factor to be able to handle.
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Late as usual. This time I have good reason. I finished shed this morning and then came to computer to work on with FP. I got several calls concerning about case which happened last summer. I’m plaintiff and try to find peacefull solution with the farmer who hit me. But that is another story. Anyway when finishing shed I was thinking some safety things which could be useful when fishing. Sunglasses are one but there are allready FP about that.
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“Bob Benedetto is the foremost builder of archtop guitars in the world. With tools that had belonged to his grandfather and tools that he made himself, he started making guitars entirely by hand (in 1968). He rose to become the standard bearer of a tradition of hand craftsmanship that threads its way back through the work of John D’Angelico, Orville Gibson, Lloyd Loar and even further to the centuries-old reverence for artistry and craft that is so much a part of the Italian and Italian-American heritage.”
--- TOM WHEELER
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As Bernd deal's with a freeze, we're starting to warm up here. It's still down at or around freezing at night, but with daytime temperatures getting up to double figures and the days slowly stretching out, I can't help but feel some sense of optimism about the coming season.
The seabass are well and truly back from the spawn and they're in good condition too. I was out the other night and although it was freezing with sleet and rain we managed a few fish. The timing of that and the warming weather is probably playing a big part in my anticipation-even wearing good waterproof gear a cold soaking definitely puts you in the mood for summer.
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I was inspired to write this series of articles about fly fishing by friends who can cast reasonably proficiently in the park, but who become frustrated under real life fishing conditions because they can’t make the cast to catch fish. Wind amplifies the problems, and there are a lot of fly fishermen (and women) who become disillusioned if they wake up to or arrive at a windy day.
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I asked Viking Lars to choose the winner for the Hot Torpedo competition. Lars writes:
“I was asked by Paul to choose the overall winner of the the great Hot Torpedo Competition not so long ago (time is relative, mind you). I have read all entries two times and after some consideration, boiled it down to two. After even more, careful consideration (it was actually a difficult decision), I’ve chosen Steve Henderson as the winner - congratulations, Steve! I chose Steve, because his story contains the classic “old-man-teaches-young-kid-to fish”. For one - that could be a highly suspicious activity today, but more because Steve shares how important this was for him, and his interest in fishing. My hope, and maybe Steve’s too, is that stories like these can inspire others to do the same for youngsters. Either youngsters in your neighbourhood or in the local fishing club. I also enjoyed Steve’s short story about his development as a fly fisher, the connection to a local shop and finally, his revelation about the AFFTA-system. I wish more understood it.
Well done, Steve and thanks for the good story.
Lars”
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At the start of every BFCC casting day Tracy gives a talk about safety; the usual stuff about slips, trips and falls plus some more specific stuff about casting events. She mentions the importance of eye protection as, even though no hooks are used, a piece of fluff moving at tournament casting speed is still going to potentially cause considerable damage if whipped into the face. Attendees are warned about giving casters a wide berth both front and back, as it’s easy to forget about how much space a top caster is going to fill with a fly-line (e.g. 80ft behind and 120ft in front). She goes on to mention the importance of checking the rod joints every so often, as under the repeated, heavy loading involved in distance casting, they have a tendency to work themselves loose. If this goes unnoticed then the result can be a broken rod and various sections being flung down the casting court at a rate of knots. I’ve heard her safety talk so many times now that I think I could recite it word for word, it hasn’t stopped me breaking two rods in exactly the manner described in the last six months though, with a #10 Sage falling foul of my ineptitude last weekend. To add to Tracy’s annoyance that her warnings clearly have had no impact on me, both the rods I broke were hers!
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As fly fishers eye protection is extremely important - and yet and more often than not see fellow fly fishers without any eye protection. I’ve hit my self in the head with a fly a few times - a couple of times in the neck (once with a weighted nymph - have you got any idea how much that hurts?) and a few times on the more critical side. Once under the chin, where a double salmon hook was buried so deep that I had to go to local hospital to get it removed. A a few years ago, where another double hook (maybe I should just stop using them) hit me on my cheek. Warning - blood if you click “Details”…
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In autumn we had short ”holiday”, which just means that we were not at the farm all the time. Satu booked VR room for us. It was kind of mind blowing thing. Everyone knows 3D movies etc but I was suprise how VR can fuck up your mind. I was playing roller coaster ride, when carriage started to ”drop” and go down fast….. I felt like really dropping even my brains told me that I’m standing in the floor. I had to take few side steps to stay up. Satu played whole hour some dancing game, two days after that, she ways saying that feets are hurting still. So it was good exercise. I played mostly some shooting game because there was no fishing game to play.
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Neuroses- A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease.
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Finally WINTER has arrived in Germany!
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When it comes to structuring your fly casting training I like to look at four key areas; Distance, Accuracy, Presentation Casts and Spey Casts. To become and all-round caster you need to master them all. There is a lot of work, enjoyment and satisfaction to be derived from doing this.
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Over the last few years, the seabass fishery in Tokyo bay seems to be changing a bit , partly driven by the conventional guys throwing large swimbaits and by a few people determinedly using Popovic's BEASTs and the like to target the bigger suzuki size specimens. Big flies are becoming much more accepted as viable fish catching tools for much of the year .And I like it! The problem is balancing the tackle for 20cm+ flies with Japanese seabass as they're certainly not 10wt fish. They're a lot of fun on a 6, with an 8 being plenty of rod for even the biggest suzuki.
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