Daily Cast Archive

The right leader for the right conditions, fish, fly size and fly line is imperative not only to better, more precise, easier casting, but sometimes also success. I’ve been experimenting with leaders for a long, long time, and if you have never, please try it, it makes much more of a difference than most people are aware of.

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Last week was kind of crazy. Thursday we had ice fishing group and Friday we handled all our reindeer and marked the last calves. Day temps has been around +15 celsius and snow level has been dropping. At night we have had around -10 celsius which is making melting slower. Tomorrow it should be heavy snowing and Monday heavy rain. Those all are signs of spring.

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A quick one from me this week, we're in a bit of a slow period here with the bass spawing and the carp getting ready to. This weekend also marks the start of "Golden Week" a set of 5 public holidays at the start of May-I'll not be fishing that week. The ood thing about the holidays is that it usually marks the start of the warm water fishing round here.

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I’ve bought a blank from America, and I must say that it is very exciting. Casts of over 200’ are very possible with it, why? Well it’s for the S55 two handed salmon event at the BFCC. I’d really love to develop this further because my very first go with it yielded a surprisingly decent cast, my second one was not so good. It was so bad that I was going to ask for a remeasure. This is because I don’t practice two handed stuff, mainly because I don’t own one anymore.

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My first International guest arrives tomorrow. Dirk! Yay!! Dirk has fished with me many times before, has had some good-sized Snakehead and an excellent-sized Gourami. What Dirk is most famous for however, is not the Giant Gourami that he caught, but the one that he didn’t catch and instead inspected his fly for over five minutes… before refusing it :))) One of the best things about running an operation like this is the fishing friends I make along the way. I’m sure that over the next 8 days Dirk and I will have put the world right around campfires :)))

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Over the years, I have become obsessed with fly tying materials....more specifically synthetic materials that can be sourced from off the shelf products intended for a purpose other than tying flies. There are a ton of these out there for those frugal tyers who are willing to do some experimenting. This week's Front Page details my two favorites.

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Fishing rivers does have its ups and downs, thankfully no dunkings recently though. With the slightly warmer, sunny weather the UK has been experiencing recently, we have been fishing a few times. The first few trips were on new rivers for us, in South Wales, as James reported last weekend. I have never seen so many flies being swept over a river and also not seen a matching series of rises. That trip I didn’t catch a fish, but missed the few rises I had to my dry flies. When we then went to our home river, the Dee near Corwen, I was much more successful. I started on one of our favourite riffles on this beat and with James tackling up on the bank, I quickly had a take to my Klink and a lovely little grayling to my hand. A few photos taken and then he went further along the beat and I carried on fishing.

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I had a casting course a few weeks ago for the youngsters in a club, where I’m a member. I enjoy teaching young people - for several reasons. They are often “blank pages” and take in advice and corrections very quickly. And with no or very few ingrained, bad habits they progress very quickly. I’ve had total beginners carry 10m of fly line with well controlled within two hours and double hauling on the next session.

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Trying to catch a Gourami in two days was always going a tough call! That’s not really how I fish for them but it was certainly fun to try. It was 2.5 days this time and I think one day last time on the back of the Snakehead fishing episode. But this time Gourami could be found. Not in the feeding numbers that I was hoping for, but there were some shots to be had. On the final morning I had the perfect eat and set – and the bloody braid tippet broke on a submerged stump, about 30 seconds into the fight. Of all the times for this to happen!!! It’s never happened before; I’ve had hooks break, straighten, and even had Gourami untie knots, but I’ve never had the braid snap. Damn!!!!

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Since I've been writing about traditional loch style wet fly fishing, the flies and what makes a good one, I thought it would be worth going over how I think about choosing specific flies to make up a team that (I think) is going to work on a given day. Nothing here should be taken as a hard and fast rule, it's all just opinion, but should provide a bit of insight to anyone interested in starting with loch style wets.

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I’ve been trying out different rods to see which one will throw the furthest for me, and it was actually quite a revelation. Last week I mentioned that the stiffer rod always threw 1’ less for me, but when I did a back to back test, it proved to be the complete opposite! Now, I must say that the conditions weren’t great, but I did do 6 casts with a Sage Igniter 690-4 (the one I fish with often) and the new Igniter 990-4.

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This week we are filming the second half of the Giant Gourami episode, the part where I catch lots of fish. I’m writing this in advance of course and so that is angler optimism for you. But if you are not optimistic about fishing, then why go in the first place?

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"I had caught fish...but I wanted to catch a BIG fish, I wanted to catch a world record. 80% of the time, it's a failure, but every now and then you get success. That success to me was so much more important, to catch THAT fish, than to just go fishing. Because I don' think I could have just gone fishing." ---Tom Evans

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Last weekend’s BFCC casting day was bookended by two fishing trips for Tracy and myself, the first to the river Wye followed, by a trip to the river Usk on the day after the competition. Being as we are now generally having to stay overnight when we attend the various BFCC days, having relocated to North Wales, we are doing our best to combine casting with some fishing. To say the drive to the beat we fished on the Wye was a bit rough (for a normal car) was an understatement. The farmer who owns the land along the bank of the river had ploughed his field so there was less than a car width of grass left. This meant we had to drive with one side of the car in the ruts, the middle of the car straddling a trench and the near-side on the grass. There was one particular alarming crunching, grinding sound that had us convinced that we had pulled the exhaust off – luckily this wasn’t the case.

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Many times I hear fly fisherman saying that what they see as Distance Competition Casting style is a hard work and it is only good on the grass, but it is not suitable for real fly fishing situation as there is too much body movements involved, and too much of everything. Of course this type of casting style is not suitable for every fishing situation when we want to cast far and present our fly at distance, and I know that, but in Saltwater Fly Fishing applications, or fishing in a lake when you have clear space behind your back this way of casting is perfect especially with bigger, heavier flies.

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Past week we had various weather, snowing, sunshine, sleet, snowing, sun….. Those are marks, that spring is coming among that we had castrate some reindeer. We have put some gps device for our boys and they have started pre holiday. Not out from fence yet but being together with main herd, with females and calves. Next week we handle main herd and then reindeer are pretty much ready to go, snow needs to melt more but otherwise.

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Following on from last week, I thought I'd look at what makes a good loch style wet fly this week. I'm not talking about style here, if you look at the same pattern tied by good wetfly tyers and fishers you'll often find that they have a certain individual look about them that reflects their home waters and the tyer's aesthetic choices, but anyone looking at them would call them good flies.

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The drive to Brecon for the next BFCC competition was rather stunning, and it was nice to see some great scenery, including some hot air balloons! Now this meant only one thing, VERY light winds and high pressure, so the day was going to be tough for the distance events. It took dad and I 2.5 hours to get there, which wasn’t bad, considering we departed at 0700 and didn’t get back until 1930 that evening.

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First up, if you haven’t heard, the flycasting world championships are to be held in Noway this August 10-14th. Norway is a super venue and I have always enjoy my time there. It’s fantastic that they have picked up the running of this event again. It’s obviously a huge amount of work and I’m hoping that one day we can host the event here in SE Asia too.

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Several years ago I became obsessed with dubbing brushes. However, being the frugal fly tier that I am, I refused to pay the prices that the well known brush makers were, and still are charging. So, I consulted YouTube University, and set out on a mission to learn how to spin my own.

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The first HT5s have been shipped! Yay! A couple to Australia (Tasmania) and one off to Canada. More being delivered this week. That’s great and it is an amazing rod, as you would no doubt expect! We have Hungarian Latohegy Orange Reel spacers somewhere between Hungary and the UK. Hopefully those will arrive early this week, because we have three rods requiring them. This is the year of the HT5!

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I sometimes go away for a few days on work related conferences and other meetings, which always means a night, maybe two or three, in another city, sometimes another country, if I’m lucky. I very much enjoy this, but sometimes I tend to shy away from the larger, social gatherings in the evenings. And then what to do?

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Last weekend weather was not really on our side. It was a heavy wind and cold one also. Luckily on Monday wind settled and we had time to go practise. We took our snowmobile and drove to our lake to practise. As you can see from photo is covered with snow and ice of course. Two months from now it will open for sure, probably little bit earlier.

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I'm back to tying loch style flies recently, some of the old staples and a few patterns that I don't tie so much-I'll probably do some of those for myself in case my imaginary Hebrides trip ever takes place. As usual I've been filming some of the tying as I go along.

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Well, I’ve recently moved over to using a stiffer rod for the #5 distance. My usual stick is the Sage Igniter 690-4 which is a very nice, and I fish with it all the time. The Igniter 990-4 was bought for casting the #5, #7 and ST27 events as I wanted something that would give me a bit more distance. With the #7 and ST27 the rod feels great, but as soon as I put the #5 through it I am quite disappointed, mainly because I have no idea why it’s happening. With the #5 line on the 690-4 I always throw my best, as I use that stick all the time, however when I switch to the 990-4, I’m ALWAYS 1’ short. Why?! I’m going to do a proper back to back with them at some point, but for now I’m going to keep sticking with the 990-4 as I’d like to just use one rod for most of the BFCC events.

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Last week I talked about teaching students and developing the core techniques of Closed Stance Accuracy, Open Stance Distance and 170. Following some discussions about this, I think it’s important to be clear that this is not for teaching beginners!! For beginners I use loop control exercises, mostly first gear casting, a method we on Sexyloops now call the Triangle Method, “Graeme’s Waves”, Minimum Power and some fun games. Most of the time I teach Double Haul in the first lesson too but that depends. It’s certainly a goal. I would like to talk some more about this and I will in the future. For me the primary goal in this first lesson is that the student can throw narrow loops both forwards and backwards, understands that the loop is what delivers the fly and anything else we can cover is a bonus. There is a hell of a lot to cover in the first lesson if the student wants to go fishing at the end!

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Spring has finally arrived in Texas, and along with it, the most wicked wind I have EVER seen!

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Next weekend sees the BFCC heading to a new venue, Brecon in Wales. The venue was suggested by a club member who used to attend the college whose playing fields will be used for the casting tuition and competition events. It also turns out that the river Usk flows through the grounds, plus the river Wye is not too far away, so Tracy and I are hoping to combine the BFCC day with some fishing.

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As most of you will know, I have a long standing love affair with historical fly patterns. When you know enough of them, both the patterns them selves and the tying techniques, you realise that true innovation is quite rare. New materials have indeed brought innovations, probably also improved the effectiveness of old patterns. And as much as I love old flies, I’m certainly no stranger to new, modern flies and modernising old flies. Apart from the S…..y W…y!

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Last weekend we had short break after winter season. We went to Rovaniemi and slept a lot and eat even more. We did some shopping for coming trip, that was kind of tricky part. It is still winter so there are not really summer clothes on sale yet. Reels I have to buy online and also some other things. Monday I had meeting with dam company again.

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