Part 1
The biggest bloody concern at the Willow Brook is a Bridge, a bugger of a Bridge.
This bugger of a Bridge separates our breeding Trout population into two communities. Those above this culvert bridge and those below. It creates a ‘connectivity issue’; as it was stated matter-of -factly in the official report. Impossible for a fish to migrate upstream is the gist of this concern. Two developing populations of wild fish that are limiting their gene pools by this estrangement.
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I’ve got to tell you, that here in the jungle, there is not a lot of luck in fly fishing. It can occasionally happen but is extremely rare. So when it does happen it’s particularly noteworthy! Last Thursday was certainly an important day of luck around here.
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One of the things I have always loved about fly fishing is the long standing associated literary tradition with the craft. More specifically I love the old out of print books that showcase what fishing was like back in "the good ol' days".
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After two successive named storms, Isha and Jocelyn, swept through the UK just days apart, the local rivers here have been blown out for the week. In fact I've just checked whilst I'm writing this and I'd still consider the Dee to be at an un-fishable level, although perhaps some who are braver than me might have been out. As such, again I've got no recent fishing to talk about. Next week isn't looking good for Tracy and myself either as we have a work trip that's going to take most of our time.
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I was really going to write something entirely different today, but then I decided to write something entirely different. If I’m as organises as I was when 2024 began, I’ll write that entirely different front page after I’ve uploaded this and get that uploaded as well. In fact, I have two more in mind, but that is likely way too much organisation and planning ahead.
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Last weekend we had free time. Satu and I went to Oulu and had some shopping and relaxing time. We had some good food and sleep. We had something to buy which you can't have from Kuusamo.
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Well, I managed to get Raslan out on Tokyo Bay on Monday night despite the weather. He actually thought it wasn't so bad when I got him wrapped up in thermals and waterproofs.
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A bridge crosses a divide and usually, it unites. The narrow wooden bridge mounted on some hefty old girders that I was stood upon united two stretches of a foot path, one a green grass path reaching off along the soil of a field of some crop or other; off it went towards the distinctive stone church tower crowned with a golden Falcon. Its wings spread, it rose above the backs of the old stone cottages, above the high domed spreading boughs of the giant Chestnut tree and the billowing crowns of distant trees rising or setting behind the old stone roof tops; even over the roof of the nearby pub, the hub of this village now. The other section of path, contrary, this a bare soil track worn out of the lush grasses, along the bankside of the Willowbrook; following along the waters, back towards its distant source.
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When I first started Sexyloops, mobile internet speed was 7.8Kb/s. I used to upload front pages from the top of a hill, because it drained the car battery flat and I would bump start the car back down again. The tagline in those days was “Sexyloops – coming from a hilltop near you!”
I now have faster Internet on the Battleship than I do at “home.”
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These days of what I call "raping the environment" where it's all about me..all about me. Well the all about me attitude is going to catch you sooner or later. Pretty soon the all bout me attitude is gonna mean NO FISH.
---Captain Cliff Webb
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Following on from James' FP last week, there has been lots of discussion about costs and resources required to run fly casting competitions. I have found this very interesting as one of the key members of the British Fly Casting Club, BFCC. We run several one-day fly casting competitions during each year and charge competitors minimal fees as the BFCC pays for the venues and we use volunteers from the Club to run the competition events. We run an open championship throughout the year for any competitors who enter at two or more BFCC meetings. The 2023 winner was Bart De Zwaan from the Netherlands. Casters can also claim records and they only need to be a BFCC member and not necessarily British. We have found that this sort of approach encourages international entrants and over last few years we had casters from the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Switzerland.
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Recently I have seen some posts in social media, where people ask recommendations for gears. It is coming now and then when people ask those and want have recommendations mostly about rods or lines, And of course waders etc.
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It's been a quiet week for me, the weather has been horrible with snow, sleet some days and sub zero temperatures every night. I've been OK althought I haven't bothered any carp. It's poor Raslan who just arrived from Malaysia on Monday, it seems to have been a bit of a shock to his system!
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Imagine a very basic video game, an advance on the old Space Invaders if you like. Your imaginary land is full of aliens that gobble up resources while damaging and destroying the place. They are not malevolent; they are just a bit thick. Your aim is to shoot them out of the sky as they cross a narrow gap at the top of the screen. During the game you can mindlessly kill up to 500 of them for a top score. Some you may hit but not cleanly, they’ll die but you don’t score, and you don’t get a second go at them, they are wastage. At the end of the game, you scoop up your carcasses, and throw them in an incinerator. Those destroyed are your final score. Morally it’s not great, but it’s a mindless game with lots of bangs and lots of death and very little point. I’ll park that there for now!
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I had a question today from a Hot Torpedo owner and so I thought I’d answer on today’s Front Page.
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When it comes to decor, go with what moves you. It's your story, your canvas, your masterpiece.
---Emily Henderson
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Many years ago, actually getting on for two decades, Tracy and I found ourselves in Dubai on a family holiday. I distinctly remember one meal in the hotel where I was tasked with selecting the wine to accompany our food. As with most wine lists the offerings got more expensive the further down the page I read, culminating in a bottle which our quick currency conversion indicated was the equivalent of £9000. [Bear in mind that this was the standard wine list that was delivered to every table, I suspect the 'expensive' stuff was reserved for their special guests]. Anyway, I enjoy a glass of wine and I like to think I can tell what I'm drinking, i.e. I can differentiate between grape varieties (more so with white wine rather than red) when challenged in blind taste test. But it's subtle, a hint of grapefruit indicating a Sauvignon Blanc, a slight fizz on the tongue giving away a Riesling etc. As such, I've come to the conclusion that there is a limit to how much I'm prepared to pay for a such a drink. Sure, they all taste a little bit different but there's no one taste that I'd be prepared to pay (significantly) more for than any other. I also suspect that the £9000 bottle in Dubai was priced on its rarity rather than its effect on the palate, and rarity doesn't matter to me one bit – it's all going to end up in the same white porcelain receptacle at the end of the day (or actually before the end of the meal these days). I think this 'value for money' assessment is something we all do for pretty much every purchase we make (this is why we plumped for a reasonably priced Pinot Grigio at the meal in Dubai), and I'll be doing the same assessment for the 16 minutes of fly casting being offered for 550 Euros at the next ICSF world championships (ok, if you're also a Spey caster you can get 10 or so minutes more).
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I use shooting heads a lot. For my salt water fishing, pike fishing, salmon fishing, sea trout fishing, even in the stocked reservoirs I use them. I the only place I never use them is dry fly and nymph fishing. They offer versality in terms of density on the line and not least length of the “operational” line.
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Last weekend was cold and then it started to warm and Wednesday we had only -2 celsius/28 F. It was also first quiet day at farm since 23.12.2023. We are still missing reindeers and I went catch one which I knew from where because it had gps.
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This week I had a few opportunities to work from home, luckily one of those days coincided with beautiful clear skies and sun. Unfortunately that was also the coldest day of the year so far, but I still walked up the river for my first fish of the year.
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There may be trouble ahead….
That second batch of 20,000 eyed ova was bedded into the clean rinsed gravel, and with the new supplementary filter box linked in, the hatchery box its pipes attached back to the Brook and the life-giving waters started to flow down through the filters and up through the tank. We also had some new habitat areas prepared for the eventual hatchlings and a clearer idea of the way ahead.
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I can’t hear “busy as a bee” nowadays without hearing Monty in “Withnail and I”. That’s one of those movies I watch again and again. Often I subject guests to it on an evening Battleship movie night.
I’m doing MCI theory with seven people and CCI theory with three people, in three different associations. I have 35 coaching students which is rather many, and seven of them are training for competitive casting. Four are beginners – well actually four were beginners; only one I would still currently class as a “beginner” – and the rest are training to be better fly fishers with deadly casts.
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I rant, therefore I am.
---Dennis Miller
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I had my first casting session of the year yesterday, though it was cut a little short by a downpour of rain that had me hastily grabbing my gear and running back to the house before I got too soaked. We're having a lot of rain in North Wales at the moment (but not as much as in other parts of the UK that are experiencing flooding) thus the prospects for getting out on the river for some grayling fishing are looking pretty bleak. The Dee has a number of depth gauges that provide live(ish) data to the river levels website, so it doesn't require a wasted drive to know that the water is very high and the colour of a Starbucks latte. At this time of year the land surrounding the river is pretty much saturated with water, thus any rainfall has an instant impact on the level. As such, fishable days can be few and far between, and I have to hope they fall on days when I'm available to get out. By contrast, getting out for some casting practice is easy for me – from my home office (which is more of a tackle room according to Tracy) I look out on one of my casting areas, and I just need to grab the 9ft #5 weight that's left by the front door and walk 20 metres and cast away. Firing my loops under the low wooden fence, back into the road, is a favourite practice drill of mine – if I can see the fluff has reached the middle of the road then I know I've nailed it. Actually this is quite a tough cast as the gap I'm shooting at is probably only 50cm high and underneath it is some tufty grass, that the mower doesn't get to, that all to easily catches the leader on the way through.
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When you begin fly fishing, everything starts almost at zero. You can do the clever thing and get instruction, both in fishing, casting and fly tying and with that some advice on the tackle to buy. One rod, one line, one reel, one leader and a handful of flies - that’s how I started and I suppose that’s how it starts for most.
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Past two weeks have just flew by. I think there was Christmas and then New year. At least people made lot of wishes about those in facebook. For me last two weeks have been more to see what groups we have at farm next day.
On Wednesday last week I had group for ice fishing. We did one before Christmas. They had some bites and small perch but not action really. It was shortest day of the year.
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As things get back to normal after the new year, my thoughts are turning to the pending return of the seabass from their spawning grounds. I've already seen a couple of photos of fish showing up on social media, but I'm pretty sure some of them are older pics of prespawn captures, so I'm not in a huge hurry to get out after them yet. It's getting close, but I'll stick with carp for the next week or so.
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Oh how I’ve tried to run the logical order of events, but it’s not always easy. As, of the various spheres of activity that seem unrelated, but then interact and you realise that events must have been earlier or later. It’s either such a tangled web we weave etc, or I’m just getting plain dotty.
One such event is Simon Johnston who was the head of the Wild Trout Trust at the time, he came along to demonstrate cleaning gravels, he made an off -cuff remark that confirmed my doubts and changed my relationship with the hatchery box. Now I realise it was just after the second winter of buying in the eyed Ova for our next attempt. Earlier than I thought.
Following that first batch of successful hatchlings as the box was tidied away and the volunteers got to exchange notes, four issues seemed very evident.
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I thought it would be interesting to bring in the New Year by talking about flycasting drills and exercises. For me a Drill is something that we use to isolate and develop a specific movement in the chain. An example of this would be the blocked PUALD drill that I use for developing the kinetic chain and a flailed wrist flip on the bock cast.
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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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