Daily Cast Archive

Well I'm back in Tokyo and coming back to reality after an excellent trip. The last 5 days I spent fishing on my own, but with more fish than I had when Hiromiki was here. The stuff I shipped arrived just after I posted ast week's FP too, so my worries about ending up with only crabs proved unfounded.

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Last week we chased clean air because the Flathead Valley was getting smoke from all directions. The West Fork of the Bitterroot was the first stop. It was a much different experience this time, actually wade-able. The campground we found was below Painted Rock Reservoir, so a tailwater fishery, but it felt like a freestone. The largest fish was a 12” brookie hiding under a cut bank. The campground had just been “renovated,” so to speak, and was quiet. While walking back to camp from fishing, I saw one jackass peeing in the middle of his campsite. When he saw me, he turned and faced away. The twit was only 40 feet from a well-maintained outhouse! I swear, it seems like some guys think the world is their personal urinal. Where do they learn this? (Rhetorical.)

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I had a fantastic guest last week for six days, from Aussie. Peter; a really nice chap, multiple HT owner – 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 – and a CI who I was helping prepare for the exam via Zoom during lockdown. Also, because we knew he was coming, we worked on the “Snakehead Shot”. Peter did fabulously well. This is an incredibly hard fishery. Normally I call it a “one fish a day fishery” but for new guests coming first time, it’s really a “one fish a week fishery”, and 50/50 at that!

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Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure of spending the day with not one but two fellow Sexyloops enthusiasts. A new friend whom I met through SexyLoops about 6 month ago named D.K. and I spent the day with Captain Freddy Lynch chasing Redfish. Unfortunately a recent tropical storm had the fish in a less than good humor.

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I was interested to listen to John Waters' chat with Paul on Tuesday's front page, especially his observed decline in the participation in fly casting sport over the years. Now John has been involved in casting sport for a much longer time than I have (I was a late-comer to the game as I didn't know competitive fly casting existed until the late 2000s), but finding competitors has been tough of late. I don't know if this year has been a 'blip' for the competitions at the BFCC, but there has been a marked fall off to the point that one discipline, at the most recent event, had three entries, two of which were Tracy and myself.

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I’ve been rather busy with work and personal projects over the last couple of months, most notably, the Dalek. I had my Dalek shoulders signed by most of the old Dr Who cast, and I don’t particularly want to take this out anymore as it’s a nice display piece, so I have been working on a new set of shoulders, neck bin and neck ring. Quite a lot of work!

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A week ago on Thursday I was guiding. It was a combined trip to an Italian-Finnish couple and to Super lady from Finland. I got a call from her on the previous Friday during hay making. She asked if I could take her fishing next week. She said that fishing has been difficult and hasn't got sizeable fish, also she said that she hasn't fished ever Kuusinki. She always has fished the upper part of Kitka which is easy to access.

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The trip is going very well so far. As always the hospitally at Nakata-san's place is great with plenty of rum and Great food. Unlike the last couple of visits, conditions have been great and I've not had to pick up the spinning rod at all. Miki got to Okinawa a day ahead of me, and took the early ferry just as my flight was landing so started fishing before I had even arrived.

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Have you ever been salmon fishing in Norway? It is of course a big, great and beautiful country that greatly solidifies the saying: “Salmon live in beautiful places”. Which ever way you look at it, salmon fishing does require some investment in tackle and flies. It’s don’t have to be particularly expensive, but it will cost some money. If I were to travel with one rod, I’d choose a 14’ 9-wt. That’ll basically handle everything. Were I to travel with two, a 13’ 8-wt and 15’ 10-wt. The latter is a bit like insurance. One of those things you (maybe happily) pay for and never hope to use. When the 15’ rod comes into use, it’s usually because the river’s high and you need sinking line and the power to cast them, not least lift them out of a roaring river.

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What an interesting conversation that was! It was even more interesting for me the second time around, especially having been part of it the first time. I’ve actually been playing around with John’s suggestions since we had our talk and they are inspiring.

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Yesterday morning, I took my mom on a day trip to Indianola Texas to get away from the Hill Country for a little while. Like me, she enjoys a good trip to the coast whenever life gets too much in the way. Our original plan was to have lunch in Port O Connor, but somehow I just can't resist the pull of Powderhorn Lake. There's a great little marina that has FANTASTIC food, and the back deck actually sits out over the Powderhorn Bayou that connect the lake to Matagorda Bay. For this week's Front Page, I have chosen to re-run an article I wrote about my affection for this special place.

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James and I are currently driving back from the latest BFCC event in Derbyshire after a weekend of fishing, casting and socialising with friends. Yesterday we had a fabulous day on the river Wye with Don, where I caught my first, and second, wild rainbow whilst dry fly fishing. Both Don and James caught good sized brownies too and we had great fun watching a brownie from a footbridge as Don cast for it and it took and then went under the bridge and down the river, making Don have to quickly follow it. Much thanks to Don for a wonderful day on a beautiful river.

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I don’t think there’s a reader here who hasn’t seen or read Norman Maclean’s book, “A River Runs Through It”. If you haven’t, do it - it’s excellent and not only because there’s fly fishing in it (which does help). The main character of the story is Paul, who is a gifted fly fisher, infamous for a technique called “shadow casting”. Paul is played by Brad Pitt, who can’t fly fish or cast a line, so his double is none other the equivalent to Brad Pitt, only in the fly fishing world, Jason Borger. Jason performs the “shadow cast” in the movie.

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My plans about fishing were gone right after I had written last week's FP. Forecast gave us few days to make hay for wintertime, so I jumped on the tractor and started to help a friend on Friday.

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Just a quick one from me this week. We've had a typhoon this week, which I'm actually pretty happy about. I'm off to Okinawa, leaving just as it will have totally cleared off, and with a bit of luck I'll be returning before another one has a chance to build up.

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On Sunday, we drove the East Side Road on the North Fork, the dustiest road I’ve ever been on. The cloud of dust from traffic was like a haboob. Well, probably not that bad, but the picture from the front window of the car is not fog or rain. Between the dust, the low water, and party parades, we plan to avoid the North Fork until Fall.

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This might be a little bit controversial for some, but I’m just going to lay it out there for the others. For those who want to experiment with it as coaches then great. I’m know quite a few of you already teach the “stopless” stroke. The Stopless stroke for me, means not trying to “match casting arc to rod bend to control tip path”, but instead accelerating the rod so that it is either finishes pointing at target or is even further rotated.

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"They say you forget your troubles on a trout stream, but that’s not quite it. What happens is that you begin to see where your troubles fit into the grand scheme of things, and suddenly they’re just not such a big deal anymore." ---John Gierach

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Last week I wrote about the difficulties the casters at the recent game fairs faced with the strong in to the casting shoulder (for the right handers) wind. This week I'm going to discuss the difficulties the casters made for themselves. Now, I know a large part of the readership to Sexyloops are very experienced competition casters so won't be prone to making these mistakes themselves, however I'm certain they will recognise at least some of them from events that they've cast at.

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Facebook is great. I'm not really a big fan of it anymore, it takes more than it gives. And I mean time. The best side is that it will remind me about memories. In the coming years there will be less of those because I'm not so active there anymore. Only highlights will be published nowadays.

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My 40th was this weekend and after the celebrations, I was in no state to get up early and brave the heat and go fishing. So it's been casting practice and a bit of fly tying this week.

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A quick FP from me today. Another busy day of coaching, although I’m hoping to get a fish in after completing the final one today. During my morning lesson I spied a set of snakehead babies that rose twice. Just maybe I’ll get to meet their parents later. Also on another note, rod orders are currently at about 3 weeks to ship now, unless you are lucky and we have the model that you want in stock. Certainly all custom rods are taking a little while as we have a backlog of orders we are getting through. If does however mean that if you want your name on the rod then it won’t take any extra time, because we can order up decals in time for your build!

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It may not be Springtime and the boat is relatively small, but I have been living aboard solo without guests all year!! It’s definitely “lived in”. Basically if you imagine the world had exploded and everything was then put into a small boat, then this should give you a pretty good idea of the challenge I’m facing. And I wouldn’t normally change anything about it, however I have a guest coming next week! So I have to tidy up, “organise”, wash, clean – all these really important things necessary to make my upcoming guest’s stay comfortable.

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Covering for Andy today. I plan to put up a video with John Waters tomorrow, which I can’t do today because I’ve booked four lessons. In fact the next two weeks is flat out coaching for me because… woohoo… I have a fishing guest from Australia joining me on the 19th for six days.

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I've now sobered up enough after the game fair to write down some of my reflections on the weekend's fly casting competitions. Actually, I've got two game fairs to write about as I'm not sure I've said much about the one in Scotland yet. The weather conditions for both competitions was strangely identical – a strong wind pushing into the shoulder of the right handed casters. How the inexperienced competition casters coped with this was interesting – they almost all ignored it and pushed on with their normal fly cast regardless of how many times they wrapped the line around their heads.

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... the simple palmer fly. Palmer fly meaning a fly with a paltered hackle, meaning a fly with a hackle going from head to tail, also called a body hackle. In times where possibilities are near endless and flies can be tied as imitations so accurate that no one can tell the difference, were it not for the hook, that simple still works. Some flies are accurate imitations, some or general “imitations” of food, simply food.

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Weather turned to extremely sensitive, that is what we say when any dark cloud will drop water. Start of the week was warm and the rain that was forecast never showed up. We made kerppu, cut branches from birch and drying leaf, food for reindeer over the wintertime. Wednesday short evening fishing with Thomas at the river. In first spot few rise on fly, no catch. It was very warm and heavy wind. Second spot I was planning was full of cars, it is last holiday week here, so fishermen still here. Next week will be much more quiet.

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I never know how I feel about line trays and stripping baskets. Over the years, I've made them and bought them and never been fully happy with them. and if possible, I'll always try to avoid them. It's just not always possible to do without.. I'm not keen on chopping up brand new lines on volcanic rock

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A quick emergency FP from me. I had planned to upload a very interesting chat I had with John Waters recently. But I’ve just noticed that it’s 3hrs and 15 minutes long. :))) Which is maybe not a problem, but I have to watch it first! And it will be dark by the time I’ve finished. So in the meantime I’ll upload a quick FP.

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Recently I’ve been fishing less than usual. I need to get that back into balance! There are basically two reasons for this, the first is that my online Zoom coaching has really taken off. I’m currently coaching 25 fly fishermen from around the globe. New Zealand, Australia, USA, Canada, UK, Sweden and the Philippines. Most are in the US. As a consequence of this, I do usually about ten 1-1 coaching sessions/week. Some weeks are busier. Over the course of this year I expect to give around 600 lessons to 50 students. OK that’s not a huge amount of work for any normal person, but I see it as more than a full-time job!! :))) I usually bring in one new student/week, so if that sounds like you then let me know.

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