Daily Cast Archive

Hectic two weeks behind now. When reindeer marking started it took 18 hours to work each day. Last weekend we had a two day break from marking, it was midsummer and it is a more important weekend for us than Christmas as a holiday.

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Although I thought the weather was getting better, the rain and wind was back over the weekend. Monday there was a thunderstorm in the forecast for the afternoon, but in the morning the weather was lovely so I went to a local river. With the weather being so unstable, I really didn't expect much but I just had to get out.

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When I was 25 I had just passed my first instructor exam in the UK and I believe I was the youngest instructor in the country at that time. And by quite a long way! Back then, most instructors wore tweed and bizarre shooting shorts that went 2 inches before the knee. I was the exception. And being a relative youngster, I was asked to demonstrate at various angling fairs at the time, including the Chatsworth Angling Fair, which was the premiere angling fair in the country. In my very first demo I remember dismantling one of the “golden rules” of flycasting, that you “can’t have a good forward cast without a good backcast”. Because this isn’t entirely true. However, I think it’s fair to say that a good backcast will certainly make a good forward cast more likely! And generally speaking most anglers have very poor backcasts.

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A week off down in KL, could only mean one thing: a hell of a lot of Zoom lessons when I return to the land of the Battleship! I’m in danger of becoming a full-time casting coach at this rate, which I will avoid, believe me!! I have to; I have at least one long guided fly fishing trip booked every month, for the rest of the year, and there is talk about filming season two of the fishing show I’m hosting – although I suspect filming for that will begin next year. Both of these things will seriously curtail my availability for casting lessons. That said, I can probably bring in one or two more students.

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"In golf, tireless tinkerers are known as ‘range rats.’ " ---John Sens-www.golf.com

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I’m still down in KL having my truck snakehead wrapped. It should be ready later today. I thought I’d talk about something that isn’t well understood in flycasting. And that is the use of the wrist. It’s unfortunate that flycasting body movement is still rather poorly analysed and taught. It’s not uncommon for instructors to concentrate on the rod or loop and teach only that. Allowing the caster to develop his or her own body movement. Which can be fine of course, and aspects of this approach I agree with, but if you look at the vast majority of fly anglers they exhibit very poor body movement and so it doesn’t come naturally and needs direction. And to do that we use drills.

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Is there life on Mars? Have aliens visited our planet? Does the American government hide a UFO wreck from Area 51 from the rest of the World? Are there separate time lines? Is time travel really possible? This is Sexyloops, so far from being proof, there is now some indications that at least some of the above can be true.

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We use the word “aurausviitta”, translation would be “ploughing cloak”. English is stupid language, it doesn't have words which match with Finnish. Or probably I just don't know the words and neither translators. Aurausviitta is anyway what we have by the road showing where the edge is during the winter, so roads can be cleaned from snow.

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We seem to be coming to the end of rainy season here. Last week we had mostly nice weather until my days off when the rain came back and made the rivers unfishable again. It's looking more favourable this week which is great because I've not fished for 3 weeks because of the weather.

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Slipperier than snot on a doorknob. Slipperier than a greased bowling ball. This is THE most slippery substrate I’ve ever fallen on. Of course, it didn’t help that I need to replace the studs on my old Simms Headwaters wading boots. We’d hiked in nearly 2 miles to the creek on trails that are well used in the winter, but much less so in the summer. The last two times we’d driven by the parking area, it was empty, but not so on Sunday. There were four cars, including an antique car from the 1920’s or 1930’s with a rumble seat. On the side was written “Warden. Montana State Prison.” Obviously, the car still ran and still had the original license plate. Pretty cool!

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This is a busy week for me. I’m heading to KL for some 1-1 swim coaching (if you want to be good at anything you need coaching - hint hint), a couple of triathlon swim meets, a bike fit and a truck wrap! The truck wrap is something I’ve been planning for a few years and it’s nice to finally get around to making it happen. The original snakehead photo that I had planned to use, wasn’t of high enough quality, and so I had to catch another fine looking fish. That’s all organised now and will take a few days to fit. I’m also putting a go-faster stripe on the bonnet for good measure.

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Once a month or so, I have lunch with an old friend that I have known since the second grade. During the course of the conversation, he always asks about my family, and more specifically how my father is doing. Not long ago he confided in me how thankful he was that my father always included him in many of our fishing trips when we were young. His father wasn't much of an outdoors man, and he expressed how grateful he was to have been introduced to the sport by my dad, as it had quite a profound effect on him, and is still something he loves to do, even to this day.

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The next few weeks will be busy for the BFCC as we have another event at Dodleston, Cheshire, which is the local event for James and myself; plus we’ll be supporting the Scottish Game Fair in Scone Palace, Perth.

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In July last year my mate Declan and I decided to make a trip over to Malaysia with Paul and Ashly. We packed our backpacks and made the flights over. Tassie to Melbourne to Singapore, and finally to Penang. We found Paul at the airport. (It would have been hard to miss him, the only fella in Malaysia with a beard and dreads). We got to the car, didn’t even have enough time to get our pack off and were met with a beer. We were in for a good trip!! We made a few stops, then on the road to Gerik. Some good driving by Paul we dodged the other crazy drivers and made it safe to his place. Made one more stop for food and we were on our way to the Battleship. We got to the shore and had to take our gear down some of the dodgiest stairs to Paul’s tinny. Loaded up, we putted across to the battle ship. Nearly taking on water, the Ronan (Paul’s tinny) was so full! We unpacked, set up our hammocks, had some dinner and told a few stories.

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Saturday Satu had a shaman drum building course. So I had a "home alone" day. Which I decided to be a fishing day. We had made plans earlier in fact that our trainees can go hiking and I will go fishing. In the end two of the trainees joined me for a fishing trip.

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Well it's been another week of storms and high water here so there's been no fishing or even casting practice. Rainy season is really giving it to us this year, but should be finishing soon at least the water table will be nicely topped up before summer. While it's not often easy to be motivated given the conditions, the only thing for me to do is get stuff ready for when conditions improve.

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Saturday was my choice of where to go and what to do. I chose to explore the northern section of the North Fork of the Flathead River that has wild and scenic designation. We drove several miles on dirt road to the old, small, timber town called Polebridge, now a tourist trap. We had to stop at the Polebridge Mercantile to get the most scrumptious huckleberry bear claws on the planet. It was my birthday, so the pastry served as my piece of cake. Our initial thought was to drive across the bridge there, which used to be a bridge made of timber poles, and then north on the Inside North Ford Road, just inside Glacier National Park. However, the Park has become so popular that a reservation is now required to drive into the park, even at remote points.

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As you will probably know, I’ve been training some of the local Orang Asli lads to take fly fisherman into this river and ultimately become fly fishing guides. Many of you will know this because you have helped fund the project and also kindly have sent over fishing equipment, both new and used. Thank you so much for your help; without your help this project wouldn’t have happened. The river is now open!!

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A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value. ----Isaac Asimov

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This is going to be a slightly rushed FP as James and I have just got back home after a trip to Rutland water in the Midlands. Fortunately the trip back was a lot better than the one on the way down where we seemed to get stuck in traffic jam after traffic jam. Our original plan was to have a leisurely couple of hours walking the banks of Rutland, obviously looking for fish, when we arrived before going to the pub where we were staying. As it turned out, we actually arrived in the area just 15 minutes before our dinner reservation, so it was a case of a quick freshen up and change before taking our seats to eat.

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This is possibly my favourite way of catching Snakehead. There are basically four ways here to catch these fish. 1) chasing them when they are parenting (babies) 2) free-risers rising every 5-7 minutes, when they are active, often in a community, and in a territory 3) hitting the banks, which is better in the Wet Season and usually, but not always, results in smaller fish and 5) intercepting a solo fish that’s changing territory. These last ones rise every 15 metres or so, every few minutes, will almost always take a fly, but can be difficult to intercept without spooking because they don’t always swim in straight lines!

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is better than a good day at work. That is saying we all know. This morning I realized that is one of the stupidest sayings I know. The thing is that I don't know what a bad fishing day is. I have never had one. I have had plenty of difficult ones but never ever bad ones. Sunday we went fishing with Satu for the first time this season in river Kuusinki. We stopped on the way in a small cafeteria (and camping) to buy fishing licenses. (season license) On that moment when sitting down in the cafeteria and buying licenses, talking about fishery and fishing with the owner. I could feel my mind brightening and I had no stress at all. Satu had to say that let's go fishing now.

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Bad news for me this week. There's been a fish kill on my local lake. Hundreds, maybe thousands of fish of various species, all dead. I'm not sure what caused it, the dead fish turned up after the typhoon last week and regardless of the reasons it's going to put the lake out of commission for a while. Until I get some news on why it happened, I'll be keeping clear of the system and fishing elsewhere. There are other places to go, and different species to target but it's a blow.

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We’d heard the Fisher River was a fun place to fish with little pressure, so we explored it a bit on Saturday. The river flows northward from near Highway 2 in NW Montana. Sixty-three miles later, it empties into the Kootenai River a mile or so below Libby Dam. The Fisher, which has a has a freestone substrate, was relatively low for early June, and the air temp was 81 F (27 C) in the sun. The bend where Cow Creek comes in seemed like a good place to start prospecting. As to be expected, the few resident fish were in the deeper holes, where we each caught a mountain whitefish and a small rainbow. Further downstream a creek dumped in muddy water and swelled the river a bit. We found a couple of promising runs to fish, but they didn’t produce. Continuing to the Kootenai, we drove up to the dam to see beautiful Lake Koocanusa (coo-can-oo’-sah). The odd name comes from combining the name KOOtenai, CANada and USA because it was formed by the Kootenai River and is partly in Canada and partly in the USA.

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I’m trying to upload this video from a different Battleship anchorage. It will be very exciting for me if I manage to upload from here, because this will 99% mean that I will be able to give Zoom classes from here too… and wow that will be something, because this is excellent fishing territory! In fishing terms that will be like Christmas and my Birthday rolled into one… hang on… that probably wouldn’t actually very good… maybe just like Christmas or my Birthday. So pretty good. This is Snakehead and Gourami territory and realistically the most remote place that this may or may not be possible; I’m a good 15km down the lake, very close to the fish farms in fact. Damn the phone has overheated. That was unexpected and so I’ve stuck it in the fridge.

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Tradition becomes security, and when the mind is secure, it is in decay. ---Jiddu Krishnamurti

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The competition events at last weekend’s BFCC casting day in Kent were very competitive and the overall result was the tightest that the BFCC has had since it’s been running the 7 discipline format; i.e. #5 trout distance, #7 trout distance, ST27, T38, Salmon overhead S55, T120 and accuracy (the rules for which can all be found on the BFCC website). The overall winner is determined by the lowest score achieved when all the individual placings in the 7 disciplines are added up, and just one point covered the top three casters. Even the countback of event wins was tied and thus the number of second places was used to determine the winner.

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So after finishing original FP, I went to fishing on our lake. It was now and then some rain, but I really wanted to test new set up. Wind was not so bad, I thought that it could be some surface fishing. Also I could test new flooring from boat. I drove with quad to lake and got my gears ready. I couldn't see any rises so my thoughts were more for casting practise and testing set up. When I got on other side with boat it was clear that it will good fishing.

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The morning of day three we woke to another still, icy morning, in for another blue sky day. We packed down camp and started to plan the day out, we made the decision to walk around one of the main lakes, thinking it would be the fastest route. It started out well, easy walking for the first couple kilometers because the lake was so low. As we made our way further up the lake we started to run into cliffs and thick pencil pine forests. I still don’t know why we didn’t think to make another plan, because it was like this the whole day, up and down cliffs and the occasional swim.

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There was no fishing this week, a typhoon was hitting western Japan and we were getting strong winds and inches of rain. A pity because I'd arranged to take Canadian John out for some carp using float and fly - I'm gradually moving him towards the fly rod, but need to overcome the resistance/fear. Just in case he didn't get on with artificials, he'd gone to the petshop and got a box of live crickets, which was weirdly nostalgic for me, but more about that later. Unfortunately we had to postpone, hopefully he can keep the crickets alive until next week. I took advantage of the weather and started restocking my severely neglected carp box, well one of them anyway. Dries & slow sinkers.

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