Daily Cast Archive

I’m sleeping on the Battleship roof tonight. Busy fishing with Graeme from New Zealand. He has successfully landed one adult snakehead so far, so that’s good! And we are tightening up his shots daily. Steady improvements and maybe he earns the 5KG Snakehead Shirt!

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If you were a trophy trout fisherman in South Texas back in the 1980s and 1990s, and you weren't fishing with Bill Sheka, you were simply not a trophy trout fisherman. ---Capt. Freddy Lynch

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It’s that time of year again when we tell ourselves—and sometimes others—that it’s time to improve our lives. Lose some weight, stop smoking, become a better fly caster—whatever it may be. However, achieving these goals often requires something challenging: genuine change.

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It is one more year ending again. There is spotify wrapped, pornhub wrapped, what porn etc people watched on different countries. What music you was listening most and what others has been doing etc. So why not sexyloops wrapped also.   If I would use only one word... it would be shitty. There was just too many things again coming and going, mostly expensive things going. And yet if I look back it was a great year.   From January to April I had good flow about casting practise and improving myself quite well. Also we had our first racing reindeer for for long time at farm and he did well, I'm looking forward for coming season for him.

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I hope you are all enjoying the festive period. I'm sitting in the living room writing this with a bowl of trifle and an Irish coffee for my boxing day breakfast. I'll be heading out to the river in a while though.

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I'm not sure if James and I have written the Christmas Day FP before – we probably have but neither of us can remember for certain. I don't think there's much to say other than we hope all you Sexyloopers out there are having a great day if you're celebrating (and of course an equally great day if you're not). Our days of waking up with an enormous hangover and gagging our way through a turkey dinner are behind us and we'll just be having a quiet day visiting family.

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I’m excited to meet Graeme from Auckland this Friday. I’ve been coaching Graeme in flycasting for a little over 20 months now. He seems to have caught the distance bug recently and has been throwing the 6WT 120’ this week. Which as many of you will know is a very serious distance cast indeed. There is about 10 more feet to be dangerously competitive in this line weight and it will be interesting to have some in-person distance sessions together to see if we can find it. I remember my first 120’ cast with a six weight. It’s quite the milestone. Graeme has been down south and fished with Stuntman Ronan a few times and when I told him that the fishing here is really good right now, he shifted things around with work and booked a weeklong visit for Giant Snakehead.

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Last week Jackson and I were taking a stroll down memory lane, browsing through some of his childhood pictures on my computer. Inadvertently mixed in with some of those were some photos from back in 2004 of the several trips I took to South Louisiana to fly fish for Redfish and Black Drum. I have some great memories that came off the deck of Captain Danny Ayo's skiff, and these photos were a not so subtle reminder of how vivid many of those memories really are 20 years later.

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I’m a little confused about The Bump and am writing as an enthusiastic fisher person and fly casting student.  I’m not sure about the physics of this whole thing, especially around the two phenomena of wave propagation from acceleration to a sudden stop and smooth acceleration of rod rotation to add momentum to the fly leg. A couple of weeks ago in Malaysia I got to watch Paul Arden demonstrate his snakehead shot. Preparing for the shot he shook out 60’ or so of line with a series of pickup and laydown casts. The ease and smoothness of these strokes and relentless progress of the relatively open loops were eye opening. Going through my drills I had recently developed a “swing thought” around visualizing the rod as a lever moving as a radius of an imaginary circle. Picking a target behind me I had attempted to “ring the bell” at the target and then aggressively rotating the rod either to a stop point or without a stop all the way through to the ground (I was practicing in a field). As long as I maintained acceleration throughout the stroke I formed nice fast moving loops. I imagined that the backcast and forward cast were tangent to this circle.  This worked better in practice than on the water. Paul’s stroke was far more languid. He suggested that I was applying way more power than necessary. His visual cue is to rotate smoothly, applying power when the rod is vertical, or past vertical, in his peripheral vision (I hope I got that right). When Paul observed my stroke he urged me to rotate later. And even later than later. It was hard for me to reconcile my swing thought with a smooth application of power AFTER the rod is vertical going forward. It seemed that the key moment had passed. I couldn’t let go of that feeling and bumped (there's The Bump) the rod to catch up. Over and over again. I want to get rid of the bump and may have solved the problem by visualizing the chord of the arc of the bending rod as the radius. So I work with my perception of this chord rather than the rigid extension from the rod handle and butt. Of course there are many problems with all of these models that I keep in my head. Here I’m neglecting translation or any up and down movement of the casting hand whether due to arm movement, body rotation or stride. But for me it creates a “swing thought.”  The rest is for another day. None of my swing thoughts work for very long and have to be modified and eventually abandoned. I wonder if I’m over thinking. 

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Last time I wrote about my journey with Paul, I stopped just before we began preparing for competitions. At the time, I didn’t know when my first competition would be, so I felt a constant rush to get ready throughout the entire preparation phase. Had I known from the start that it would be about six months until my first competition, I would have been more relaxed. That feeling of being in a hurry persisted throughout the competition season. My first competition was on May 25, followed by just a few days to prepare for another in Piteå on June 8. Then, only a couple of days after that competition, I received a phone call offering me a spot on the Swedish team for the World Championships in August.

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We have been waiting snow, we had some but 3 cm/ one inch doesn't really count on this time of winter. Our high season is just behind corner as shortest day of the year. We live from snow in winter. We have spent hours to built trails with little snow and have manage all to way. Saturday is shortest day, about 2 hours 20 minutes daylight. In summer when we have 24 hours daylight, which is exact 6 months from now, people says that summer is over after that day. Nobody says after shortest day that winter is over. Funny how people behaves.

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I didn't fish this week what with getting ready for Christmas and the like, Dave was out on the Bay on Tuesday and the fishing continues to be odd with little activity on the bigger stuff, but at least the numbers are dropping off so it seems that the fish are moving away to spawn roughly on time. That means it's time to leave the seabass till late January and target cold carp in the meantime.

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This week has been another tough one for Tracy and myself in terms of coming up with some inspiration for writing a front page – Tracy hasn't picked a rod up at all and all I've done is flick a #5 weight about for a bit immediately in front of our house. Tracy is still struggling with her knee and that is preventing us from going Spey casting for fear that the twisting motion will make things worse. The injury was caused by casting in the first place; trying to include some trunk rotational movement must have put some stress on her knee which became sorely inflamed and is taking a long time to recover.

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I fancy going fishing and have a couple of lessons tonight, so need to head off quite shortly. Lots of exciting stuff in the works. The long awaited new version of Sexyloops should be ready to launch soon. Sungai Tiang website is getting closer to launch as well, thanks very much to the help of Bonamy in Austria. I’m planning to make videos again both for SLTV and the Casting Manual starting soon. I’m testing the HT9 prototype extensively. And today I’ve been invited for the early bird payment for the Malaysian Ironman next November… they certainly know how to get my money early!!

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Fly fishing is very much about solving problems. That’s one of its most interesting aspects. I’ve been working on a problem here for almost as long as I’ve been in Malaysia, certainly for the past seven years. Namely that there is a significant percentage of fish that eat the popper but don’t stick. Solving this would potentially double my catch rate. So as you can imagine I’ve invested a lot of time into it, but despite many different tactics, I keep coming back full circle to where I am, because despite the high failure-to-hook ratio, the overall fish-to-the-boat ratio is still higher with my standard Vince Loud-Mouth Popper size 1 or 1/0 approach.

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Malaysia - If not now when?

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When I was training for the World Championships, I did some stupid things. One session in particular stands out. Casting wasn’t going very well, and instead of calling it a day and coming back another time, I kept pushing. My technique was off, the session became much longer than usual, and I tried to force a good outcome with a ten-foot twelve-weight rod. Not a recipe for success. After that session, I experienced pain in my forearm. It was located in the meaty part of the forearm, but otherwise, it was hard to pinpoint exactly where the pain was. I had felt some pain or stiffness in this area before after casting, but it usually went away quickly. I could often cast it away by focusing on being relaxed while doing some distance casts. Sometimes, the discomfort came from being too tense in my grip during casting. But this time, the pain was more stubborn and on a higher level.

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I discovered end of 1980's band called zero nine. It is rock band from Finland, in fact from Kuusamo where I live nowadays. I remember that they had few great songs. Last summer I found them again and realized that they have song about fly fishing. You mighy not heard of them, yet they have played with bands like ACDC, Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper, ZZTOP, Scorpions, Def Leppard, Prince of darkness (ozzy) etc... So someone have heard them.

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I've been out carping a fair bit recently, largely because the seabassing has been weird and unpredictable. It's been fine, if a bit chilly as temperatures are starting to fall and stay low, at last. But I have been spending a lot more time behind my vice. So I thought I'd look at another fly pattern this week.

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I haven't picked up a rod to fish or cast for quite a few weeks now, since I injured my knee. The weather has played a contributory role in this too, as it has either been extremely wet or windy leading to the local rivers being high. Knowing that my knee is still healing, the last thing I should do is get into a river that's running fast, as it's highly likely that I'll slip and make the injury worse.

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I had a fun and successful week fishing with David from LA. David landed six Snakehead in the boat, which is an outstanding first visit. He also had a few eat but not set, one miss the fly completely and at least three break off. The spills and thrills of Snakehead fishing! And one Gourami shot!!

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Today's Front Page will be a short one, as I am currently celebrating my mother's 76th birthday!

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Starting to lift weights to get stronger and more flexible is simple, but not easy. I will give you a good introduction that can add hours to your fishing trips and years of fishing to your life. You might even be able to add feet to your casts.

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The answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is 42. The great problem with the answer is that no one knows the question. 1140 is another answer to which I do know the question. The number of front pages I’ve written (approximately). I did the math the other day when texting with Paul. I’ve been wondering for a long time if I would ever run out of topics?

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Past weeks has been extinguishing fires. Some bigger but mostly small ones and every day. Or it depends how you think about. We have had snow and then not and then yes. It didn't really matter before Sunday, when everything change. Last week we fixed trails with natural snow, we gather it from here and there, and were able to have 1,5 km reindeer sleigh trail. Sunday we had first groups and everything was working nicely and season was open officially.

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Just a quick one from me this week, I thought I'd look at a weird fly that I used to have a strong aversion to and was a bit of a bogey for me but no longer is. "What is it?" you cry!

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For me fly fishing is about moments. One of those moments here is the window of opportunity that snakehead present. That glimpse of the fish that screams “shot!!” Sometimes it’s the entire colourful flank of the fish at it surfaces, at exactly the right place, which screams money shot.

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When David asked me the best time to visit, I told him the first week in December and here he is and the fishing is great! In fact I think it’s the best I’ve seen it in about two and a half years.

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The choices of rods are mind boggling, and spending $750 isn’t necessary. Remember, most manufacturers’ second- or third-rated rod was their premium rod five years ago. ---Capt. Tim Mahaffy

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I’m checking my video library to remember the history of our work together. The beginning of our work is a bit of a haze; I remember what we did, but not really when. But I did my homework, reviewed the lessons, and took notes. I just remember when we had worked through the full curriculum, and Paul asked, “What’s next?”

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