Daily Cast Archive

The older we get, the more capabilities we have to leave behind. That's life. Fly fishing makes quite a difference here, I think!

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The Dilemma... You have a large arbor fly reel that will take 200-300m backing, a spool of backing, and a fly line. How do you know how much backing to run on?

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I managed to escape last week for some fun fishing time in one of my favourite remote parts of the lake. I was expecting to find snakehead parents with babies, which we did, but not many. Instead I found freerising activity. This is my favourite snakehead fishing. It’s also the most challenging!

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A couple of weeks ago I performed a test looking at how far I shot the line during a distance cast. There were a number of shortcomings that I identified in the data I recorded arising from the time I had available to conduct the test (it was a bit rushed) and the confined space where I was casting causing problems with the wind, namely some odd things happening to the leader i.e. a clean turn-over was a matter of luck. As such, I promised to do a more thorough test when I had more time and I could get to my usual field.

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Take note of the ‘e’ - I’m dyeing fly tying materials. In this case, marble fox, because I’m completely out of long fibre fiery brown and I’ve been unable to get a proper colour. Most are just boring, drab brown. Dyeing is not easy, but thankfully, my friend Claus Damsgaard had his hotline open, so it’s cooking as I type in the garage.

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Monday was still cold kind of winter weather, after that heat wave found us. It has been from +3 to +8 in shadow and sun is warming so it has been even +15 celsius in sun shine. I salted the meat and those are hanging now. About 2 weeks and it should be ready.

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Although smallmouth bass are generally thought of as a warm water species, February and March offer some of the best fishing here and it's certainly not warm. I usually switch between big streamers of 12-15cm and small crayfish depending on the water I'm fishing-a few of the rivers are just big long riffles that flow too quickly for presenting a crayfish imitation slowly on the bottom. Received wisdom is that the bass key on crayfish and don't chase bait till the water warms up a bit, but actually this is very river dependent in my experience and some of my biggest smallmouth have come on big baitfish patterns in the early part of February. It pays not to be too fixed on what's "right" sometimes!

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As a child there were two times a year that I made myself sick with anticipation - vomit type sick. Like clockwork, on the eve of opening day of fishing season and then on Christmas eve, up it would come. The adults had their Death & Taxes; Craig, his Fishing & Christmas.

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We are just coming into prime time for catching parenting Giant Snakehead and we are not all that far away from Freerisers and surface-feeding Gourami. This is typically the beginning of my hosted trips season (mid March is kickoff). However international borders are closed and even interstate travel is restricted to work only. As a consequence of this there is virtually no one on the lake apart from me and the local Orang Asli – and so I really should have a red-letter season!

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A few years ago I tested a number of rods to see which I cast a MED #5 line furthest with. I think this coincided with a change in the BFCC rules to allow for any 9ft rod to be used in the trout distance event, rather than one with ‘5’ written on it somewhere. If I recall correctly I used rods rated as #5, #7, #10 and #12 and the maximum distance I cast was in the same order as the rod ratings, i.e. the single longest cast was with the #12. Ultimately I ended up using the #10 rod for the trout distance event because I really hated how the #12 rod felt with the #5 MED line. I should point out that at the time of these tests I only ever practiced #5 distance on a rod rated as #5, namely the much talked about TCR #5.

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It has been excatly one year when we our first lockdown started in Finland. Now we are in lockdown kind of again. Normally in this time of year we would be planning our ice fishing trip and other nice things after busy winter. Not this year even it was not busy winter. We have been doing lot of other things instead and there are things to do.

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The cherry blossoms are coming into bloom and spring is definitely on the way here, which means that the maruta are arriving in the rivers here in Japan. I imagine that if you've heard of the maruta at all, it's been in an FP I've written and mentioned them in passing. The maruta is an anadromous member of the dace family, native to mainland Japan. They look cool with lateral stripes of black, orange and white.  Unlike European dace, they get fairly big averaging probably 60cm fork length when they return to spawn. The best rivers for them are the main arteries running into Tokyo bay, and the weekends will see some very busy riverbanks as the locals, and visiting anglers from around the country rush to take advantage.

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Last week I was still studying Zander and exchanging my findings with several Zander experts.

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If you want a fly casting lesson I teach via Zoom from Saturday through Tuesday (sometimes Wednesday). The rates are 60GBP/hr. However you can book a six lesson block @ 50GBP/hr or even book a 10 lesson block @50GBP/hr and get two more for free! I’ll be doing this until International travel is allowed again into and out of Malaysia and then I’m back to teaching/guiding/hosting fly fishing trips in the jungle. So get it while it’s hot! Over on the Board I had some great advice last week on adapting my popper flies for Snakehead to increase hook-ups, which is what I’m working on at the moment. We always are happy to see new members on the Sexyloops Board, so if you fancy getting involved then fire me an email.

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This week Nick Moore and I were discussing distance casting and had an idea for a test. I, along with others, have been helping Nick improve his distance casting up to a competition standard. His progress has been pretty spectacular going from a typical ~100ft maximum to over 120ft in a short time. His target is now to cast a #5 over 130ft at which point I think he’ll fare pretty well in most competitions (he’ll probably beat me!). The main thing that has helped Nick improve is his desire and drive to advance, if someone is willing to put the long hours into practicing then improvements will happen, not necessarily at the pace of Nick’s, but they will come.

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Fly size… A difficult subject to discuss. Not from a normative point of view as such: Measure the fly against a ruler, both length and girth and you have absolute measurements. But there’s more to fly size than that, I think. I think fly size should be more discussed than fly pattern. I believe that fly size matters more than the particular pattern in many situations.

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Days are getting longer fast, sun is rising at 6.38 am and going down at 5.50 pm. Malesia 7.21 am and 7.26 pm, Paris 7.12 am and 6.50 pm. We are cathcing you up and soon it will that our days are longer and longer, and in some point.. no night. It has been chilly again, begin of week it was -32 celsius at night and daytime around -20. Sun is warming up a lot and it can be just -10 celsius at the sun. Summer is coming.

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For the past several months, I have been listening to a Youtube influencer named Rick Beato. For those of you who are not familiar with Rick, he is a musician/record producer/engineer turned Youtube personality that has a very popular channel regarding all things music. His series titled "what makes this song great" is a favorite of mine that I often find myself listening to during the long drive to and from my office.

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For several years now the stock of Zander in my hometown is decreasing both in the average size and in the number of fish. I have been fighting to support saving them as best as I could. It was a fight against quite some of my fellow anglers!

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It is amazing how many big fish live in small streams. These fish have to be stalked and hunted. There is no room for traditional overhead or roll casts. There is only one cast when fishing for trophy brown and rainbow trout in small, narrow, “heavy jungle” creeks in New Zealand…the bow and arrow cast. This is akin to hunting with a bow and arrow. Although this sounds daunting, this in fact is the easiest cast to learn, and with practice it is deadly accurate. I fished with a friend, the Big Trout, Small Stream Specialist of New Zealand

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So yep 25 years to the year, next month actually, is when I took my first instructor exam. I knew that I wanted to teach fly fishing and try to make a career out of it. It’s had its ups and downs! I was 25 years young, had been fly fishing for 15 years and was already travelling. A few seasons in New Zealand and a van drive around Australia.

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There was an interesting comment posted on the board during the week (or maybe it was the week before, they’re all blending in to one for me these days), regarding the cross-over point between fly casting and fixed-spool (spin) casting. For me this is quite an intriguing question and I sense I’m going to end up on a field trying to get some empirical data at some point in the near future. I’m sure we’ve all seen chicken-chukka Lasse’s videos showing what sort of mass it’s possible to cast on fly gear, but I’m pretty sure that plastic fowl would fly further on spin gear, but as things get lighter there must be a point where fly casting wins out.

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It happens several times a year and often it’s predictable and sometimes it’s not. That stillwater trout, be they freshwater or saltwater, fourage in really shallow water. Even the bigger ones. There aren’t many coastal anglers in Scandinavia who hasn’t experienced spooking one of several trout on your first two foot steps into the water. On lakes in Norway I’ve seen the same behaviour - if your approach is careful enough, sometimes you’ll find feeding, even rising, fish right up against the shore.

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I had other subject in my mind for this week. One new and things can really turn around. This headline was something that it can not be passed in anyway. There is long journey still ahead but first steps are taken in real world. Some really extra ordinary things can /will happen in future. I never thought that it would happen in short period and I had doubt if ever. This is for sure time to be happy that I was wrong. Dam is not going down yet, instead they will close it.

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As many of you read on a previous Front Page, the week before last, the state of Texas, among many others went through one of the worst cold weather events in recent decades. One of the unfortunate byproducts of this weather system was a fairly sizable fish kill along the entire length of the Texas Gulf Coast.

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All big fly rod labels (and most smaller ones as well) offer at least one new fly rod series EVERY year! I wish my favorite label would start a vote for everyone's favorite rod series of all times and then bring the winning series back to live!

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I suppose I am privileged that I have been able to travel the world and fit in fishing wherever possible. Hopefully I will be able to travel again. If I’m travelling, and I don’t have a friend there, I will find out who is the best guide and engage their services. I now have a lot of guiding friends around the world and I thoroughly enjoy their company. I go back when I can. This raises the age old comment “Oh, but he uses guides”. Yes I do and I’m better for it. I have caught a lot of species that I would never catch without a guide, and I have developed skills learnt from those guides to enable me to catch those and many other fish. Some don’t use guides, some do and it’s a matter of preference and circumstance. There is no right or wrong, just do what suits you.

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Being online is all well and good with the Board, but with whatsapp, messenger, emails, faceshit, reading the news and all the other never-ending time-consuming and often-bollocks chatter that being online entails, I find it difficult to get the actual important work done and consequently the constant chatter often makes a full day’s fishing impossible. It wasn’t like this for me before, but lockdowns has meant that my life has been significantly more “online” this past twelve months than ever before. Thankfully now the lake is now open again. I hadn’t fully appreciated just how important it is for me to be remote.

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