Daily Cast Archive

It's not just online casting groups that are full of dross, pretty much any aspect of fishing is full of rubbish, people confidently talking utter pish, and of course sycophants who buy into stuff because of who says it or how polished their delivery is.

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It's been another typical week in social media land regarding competition distance casting, a lot of people don't seem to know or acknowledge that it even exists. This includes people who have signed up on pages that are dedicated to fly casting with absolutely no mention of fishing in the title or in the longer description of what the site is all about.

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So this month we have a new Sexyloops front (and back) end coming. A website for the Sungai Tiang Experience. Lots of rod builds from the past six months. Fish (hopefully), more fish and yet even more fish (big ones). We have the all-exciting new Sexyloops Hats (after I’ve worked out shipping costs) which will catch you bigger fish - guaranteed. And I’ll be uploading flycasting videos for the video manual again. I can hardly contain my excitement. But first…

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One of the more vivid memories of my younger days fishing in saltwater is fishing off of a lighted pier at night for Speckled Trout. Back in those days, we used live shrimp, and occasionally a gold or silver Johnson Sprite spoon. When I started fly fishing in the early 1990's I realized very quickly that one of the most enjoyable ways to spend a summer evening is with a 5wt. rod and a size 4 Clouser Minnow on a lighted pier. When the tide is right, and the bait is around, the action can be really fast and furious, and to put it mildly, it's a TON of fun.

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Ashly and I are off to Kuala Lumpur for a few days this week. The reason is for some swim coaching. Ashly is training for the Ironman 70.3 next year and currently can’t swim the front crawl (and only learned to do some breast stroke a few years ago), and I want to improve my Ironman swim considerably and get that down to a relaxed and comfortable 1hr15.

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When nymph fishing for trout and grayling outside the dry fly season, even in it, I have three patterns that I rely heavily on (and a few more - just for good measure). All three represent staple food sources that trout and grayling feed on year round and in just a few different sizes these are enough.

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Monday after finishing reindeer butching I checked forecast for coming days. Tuesday looked absolutely stunning for fishing, still +7 celsius and sunshine. That would be really good for our lake, so I started to plan day that afternoon when it would warmest moment, I would be fishing.

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We've had fairly unstable conditions recently, but that has luckily worked in my favour. When temperatures have been up and the light has been good I've been out chasing carp. On the other days I've been trying to get organized for some offshore jigging, the main obstacle to which is making calendars match with the other guys.

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James and I spent last weekend in southern France with the Fly Casting Lab (FCL) team at the Dordogne Fly Fishing Festival. We had hoped to fish the River Dordogne however the predicted weather before we travelled indicated lots of rain for most of the time. Plus we had been advised that the river was already high. We landed at Bergerac airport to see the predicted heavy rain, which continued steadily throughout our drive to Argentat. When we had to divert from our planned route due to flooded roads, we knew we definitely wouldn't be fishing. The diversion caused a slight problem for us as we parked trying to work out another route using the sat nav in the hire car and asked for help from several locals. Sadly neither James nor I know any French and the locals we spoke to didn't know any English, so getting clear directions took some time. Thanks to one lovely lady, we managed to work out our route and off we went, driving through some flooded roads (that were only passable due to the fact we were driving an SUV) and then over a mountain on extremely narrow and unlit roads – quite stressful and treacherous when driving on the opposite side to what we're used to.

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“No one ever achieves anything that they don’t first set out to do” Mr G. I realise that many of you are coming into Summer and not Winter – I’m coming into the Wet Season – but for many of my Zoom fly casting students, they are coming into winter and I want to talk a bit about that.

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"Never before in the history of fly casting has there been a group of individuals as talented as this one, all gathered in the same room in the state of Texas". ---Bill Gammel

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October 19 - I’ve been driving up the California coast between LA and San Francisco. Saw the elephant seal juveniles on the beach in San Simeon, visited Big Sur, then retraced my route back down to Cambria to avoid the sections of Highway 1 that were damaged by landslides this past April. Drove north to San Francisco and bagged a couple of museums and great restaurants in Chinatown. Now we’re in Monterey for the wedding of a couple of work associates. Or I should say former work associates. Just before the storms and landslides in April I retired.

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There are those flies that just somehow become associated with quite specific water, as much as they are intended for specific species, specific insects and specific water. One such is the Don Martinez’ Black Martinez. It’s just a great allrounder and I’m actually sure it’ll catch fish almost anywhere, but for me it’s a lake fly.

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I have always time to think about fishing, not able to do it yet thinking. We have had extremely busy week with reindeers and long days. Cold season has passed and now weather has been around +5 celsius on daytime. We had one night - 6 celsius but then "warm" and light rain. So I don't think lake is frozen. Some absolute nice and calm days, which would be perfect for lake fishing now.

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I'm a bit short of things to write about this week. It got hot again after the typhoon, temperatures were easily in the range where a top water bass bite would have been on the cards but I had made other arrangements.

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Last Saturday saw the final BFCC day of the year (although I should point out that Tracy is thinking about organising a competition only day to part make up for the event that was cancelled due to poor weather). It's been a slightly odd year as far as attendances at the casting days, and none of the dedicated members can quite figure out why people aren't turning up in the numbers that they used to. The tuition available at a BFCC day is without doubt the best value for money you can get. For £15 you can pretty much get one-to-one tuition from a number of different MCIs for as long as you want (they do like a short break for lunch, mind you). They'll teach you whatever you want from the basic foundations through to any advanced cast that takes your fancy, so you'd expect people would be fighting for places, but no. The same goes for the casting competition side of things, the number of competitors has been significantly down on previous years. Even the chance to compete for the overall championship at the last event didn't bring out any additional casters other than Rickard, who made it over from Sweden.

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I have no idea what to write about today! I know that’s very unusual for me. Normally I can find something to write about. The way it works when I have nothing new is that I pick any subject that first comes to mind and find a way of linking it back to fly fishing. I’m very well practised at this. I suspect we all are. For example, imagine you are in a conversation with someone, how many moves are you away from turning the conversation from football, dressmaking, or car maintenance into fly fishing? Going straight from the topic to fly fishing js always a bit rude. For example, you can’t say “I take my car to go fly fishing, do you know I was fishing last Thursday… blah blah”. That would be rude.

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Somewhere around 2005, I found myself in need of a good outboard mechanic. Capt. Freddy Lynch recommended a fellow down in Aransas Pass named Max Woodard. Max and I hit it off immediately, and when he found out that I was building all of the rods for the Redfish Cup tournament team of Freddy Lynch and Jeff Clarkson, he approached me with a proposal. Would I be willing to build him and his cousin (who was also a mechanic at the same marine shop), a couple of fly rods, as they wanted to learn how to fly fish. In exchange, he would do the labor on my outboard repair for free. Sounded like a good deal to me, as the repair in question was NOT going to be cheap!

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We have a new FP writer for Sunday next week, so it’s a quick one from me today. I’m recovering from yesterday’s hot and sweaty Malaysian Ironman. The official photos haven’t come out yet and I expect them in the next days. In the meantime today’s POD is an outstanding one that my wife took. Maybe she could get a job working with Sportograf?! :)))

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Good quality fishing for trout on lakes is really hard to come by in Denmark, which is why I enjoy travelling to Hökensås in Sweden. Hökensås have over 25 small lakes and a couple of stretches of river. Yes, they are stocked, but it’s done conservatively and while you can expect to catch trout it’s not given. The fish are left to become as wild as they can, so they act as wild fish and can be both as easy and hard to catch as true wild fish.

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Last Saturday with heavy rain and wind our lake opened again. I had great plan to go fishing on Sunday but weather didn't agree with me. Well you could also say that I was too slow. I missed the window either on river or at lake, as there was nice sunshine and not bad wind for about 2 hours period.

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It's been a funny week here. At the start of the week Facebook showed me a memory of seabass fishing last year, I was bundled up against the cold, when I saw the notification it was almost 30 degrees and I was wearing flip-flops. This is after the hottest summer on record, and until Tuesday we'd been seeing record temps essentially each day. It's a worry.

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Next week I will be writing the website for Sungai Tiang. Currently it’s the beginning of the wet season in this part of Malaysia. As a result the river is high and dirty – and closed to fly fishing. However the Wet Season normally ends around late December or early January. At this point the river clears but continues to run high, making it very difficult or even dangerous to cross safely. So the main season is Feb-April inclusive. This time of year has little or no rainfall, the river is low and clear and perfect for fly fishing. I know how some of you like to plan your trips in advance, usually through necessity, or just being very well organised, and so now is the time to book your spot for next year.

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Apart from recovering from jet lag, which seems to affect me more and more these days, I’ve been busy tapering my training. The secret to good tapering is to gradually decrease the training workload but not so much that you feel stale, but instead are left primed and ready to go. But it never seems to work out that way! Tomorrow Ashly and I drive to Langkawi for a holiday and the Malaysian Ironman. Ashly gets the holiday and I get the Ironman. Next year Ashly plans to do the 70.3 (the Half Ironman) – so that’s the end of her Langkawi holidays! I’m looking forward to managing Ashly’s pre-race stress!!!

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Figured I'd rerun this one since t's the 4 year anniversary of The Kings passing. Miss you Ed.....the world is a much less interesting place without your music.

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When I lived briefly in Blackpool as a photographer, I loved the place only as a backdrop to the fashion shots that I was doing, it was anti-glamourous and a little gritty. A complete counterpoint from that industry that I flirted on the fringes of.A dog tired, pig eared, Victorian seaside town full of faded kitsch, urban decay and some abominable bad taste.

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Viking Lars is fishing in Sweden. I have an interesting story about camouflage, because about 6 months ago a small crustacean managed to get through my boat’s water filter system and ended up in the toilet! I have no idea how this happened but I spent the next hour trying to “save” him. My idea of saving him was to extract him and put him in the boat’s aquarium, with the idea that I could study it and tie some killer flies. However after accomplishing this challenging feat, it promptly disappeared and I assumed that the gourami had immediately eaten it. I swear that the gourami actually looked guilty.

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It started fast and burned with huge flame. It had up and downs as everything in life. There was some boring parts but that's kind of nice even it is little bit dull. Anyway it seems to be over and looks like it is not in my hands to fix it. Only thing I can do is cross fingers and wait to see how it turns out eventually.

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When I was home, I picked up new bladders for my tube and replaced my old heavily patched ones. The new ones seem to be heavier than the old ones and the seams have more overlap, maybe they go a lot of returns on the old ones. Hopefully this will solve my chronic puncture problem.

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This is going to be a very quick FP this week as we've not been up to much in the way of fishing or casting. The weekend just gone Tracy and I were at a friends wedding, so it was a case of too much to eat and too much to drink, followed by a recovery. Luckily the weather cleared for the time of the outdoor ceremony, which was very lucky because it had been pretty bad in the week leading up to it. However, the weather turned horrible the day after and has been like that since. I had hoped to be honing my accuracy casting for the BFCC meeting this Saturday, but so far this week I've barely been outside of the house (other than to the local shop).

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I’m back in Malaysia after almost a month in the UK. 11 days to IM Malaysia. When I went to the UK this time I gave myself 2 weeks to recover from the flight, reacclimatise and taper my training. A cunning plan, no less.

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