Last week was insane. Starting before 8 am from home and returning around 8 pm. Between those hours driving ATV 7-9 hours in shitty terrain, collecting reindeers. Afterwards the whole week is little blurry.
It was week when some days I should've been in two difference place at same time. Luckiky Satu was covering some so we survived. Two broken ATV for one day, transporting mine to garage, fixed and back to forest. Satu's I rescued late night from forest so we were good to go on next day.
Some parts were broken from me and ATV during the week, I got bad hit to chest and another one on head. If it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger, so here we are.
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Crabs are great. I love crabs, they’re everywhere in some shape or size, they’re delicious and full of protein which means, despite the difficulty they are worth the trouble for a fish to tackle.
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Part 2 of Chris’ CI training adventure
Practise Session 4
Set up and started and a dog walker with a ball thrower enters the field and studies my movements, I ignore him and continue casting along the tape measure lined up with plant pots marking various strategic lengths. He stays scrutinising me with all the intensity of my witheringly sardonic mentor Mr Gently Benevolent (otherwise known as Mark Surtees) and I am starting to feel self-conscious . The dog with doleful eyes just sits there and pants, with its tongue out.
After what seems an age of this impasse he (the man) eventually breaks the awkward silence and says.
“Can I give you some helpful advice?”
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I’m looking forward to welcoming three new fishing guests this Wet Season as well as returning regulars. And for those of you who are thinking of joining me next year, here are the shot preparations and packing list!
The first thing that you absolutely must do is to train your Snakehead Shot. If you are not slipping line on the lift, briefly touching the line and then immediately shooting line into the backcast, and if this is not automatic, then you will almost certainly not catch any Snakehead! It’s possible that you could fish around the edges and pick up some small juvenile snakehead, but that’s not really the game!
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From about a year or so before I took the CI exam well through right now, I am typically doing one of three things. I am either about to go fishing or casting, in the middle of fishing or casting, or on my way home from fishing or casting. Mayhap that I have been in two of these states at the same time on several occasions. There have periods of time that the casting completely takes over, and I have neglected my passion to net fish for people. I am working on that. One period in my life that primarily involved casting every chance I could was before the CI exam.
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My trip to the Delta was a hoot but the fishing was difficult. I learned a lot. New questions arose. I garnered new insights. But best of all, I spent the week with my old school roomie and best bud Marty. We always fish well together, just not often enough. Life gets complicated and we’ve lived 3000 miles apart for the last 40 years. I introduced him to my long-pole-guy Brian Boehm, who guided us for 4 days through wind and dirty water. Brian also helped liven things by hooking us up with his crew of Floridian guide buddies after-hours, so we were immersed in the arcane arts of the shallow water chase for big reds, the etiquette of the chasseurs, the merits of one-piece rods and various skiff hull shapes. All good.
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Where I last had to end my FP was 1:30 in the night. I sent the FP to Paul and got the usual, “Heading out for a fish, have a great day!”. First I needed a great sleep. The following day was a great day. All the days were great days during the event. To me it felt more like a meet up for fellow caster to have fun, share ideas and teach each other than a testing event. The hotel had the good taste to not open breakfast too early so you did get some sleep in the morning. But we were all there when the breakfast opened, except a few that liked to sleep a bit better than some of us. Well I would have liked to sleep a bit longer but couldn’t. Then it was out on the field and spend the whole day there, doing fly casting stuff, then dinner when we ran out of daylight, then hanging in the bar and talking about casting and fishing until late.
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In hundreds of visits to ‘the field’, I rarely get a comment. The football pitch and grassy expanse that’s also fraternized by dog walkers; always at least one, and often up to half a dozen. There’s the occasional huddle of public school, 6th form, spliff smokers, and of course the local nut-job eccentrics, which I guess includes me, as I regularly go down practicing my fly casting on this grass expanse, a stone’s throw from the river over the far fence.
I’ve had probably two “Have you caught anything, ha haha’s” and one genuinely inquisitive “Can I ask what you’re doing (my son is fascinated)”? in all the years of going there.
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After all the trouty flies over the last few weeks I thought I’d go a bit salty this week, and with seabassing starting here now, the surf candy was the obvious choice. Obviously, it’s nothing new, but it’s an amazing fly at what it was designed for, and also loads of other applications.
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Tracy and I are now back in Wales after our last casting competition of the year at the Argentat fly fishing festival in France. This is run by the guys at the Fly Casting Lab (FCL) Facebook page and consists of an indoor exhibition event and an outdoor open competition, both cast with the #5 MED line. The standard of both these competitions is extremely high, the French guys have clearly put in a lot of work since the time I first cast against them, when they came over to a BFCC meeting, and it has paid off in the distances they are now hitting.
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Oh yes. We are planning to start building rods in the US around the end of the year…. the Hot Tornado. I’m also looking at the Hot Tuxedo. See if you can guess where those will be built? That will give us Hot Torpedo, Tortuga, Tornado and Tuxedo. Just different labels for the appropriate markets. The motor industry does something similar, but not as well.
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I dabble in hosting casting competitions. I say that I dabble because the first iteration of the Best in the Driftless competition that Marty and I hosted this year went surprisingly smoothly. All of the casting competitions I've helped host have been associated with events that were already planned. This arrangement is a blessing. I don’t have to worry about the logistical nightmare such as venue selection, catering, insurance, vendors, permits, and so on. I might need to face the more significant challenge of hosting a competition as the main event before I can confidently call myself a proper competition host. Unfortunately, casting competitions currently lack the attendee numbers needed to generate sufficient revenue to get them off the ground, but I am working on that.
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It’s hard to believe Clarence Thomas was confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice October 15, 34 years ago. Just before, I embarked on a 4-day trek with a couple of friends. We walked a loop from a trailhead in Independence, CA, famous as the site of Charlie Manson’s trial, across Shepard Pass, through the cirque that is the source of the Kern River, along Diamond Mesa and back down to Independence, returning to LA in the middle of Anita Hills testimony.
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I’ve mentioned before that Paul once asked what’s next? He suggested CI and I said competing. The competing thing went quite well. So after a while the CI thing felt quite compelling. We did work on it a bit on and off after the worlds championships.
But this summer it got at bit more real? Like ”have you found an assessment date yet?” Well no? Didn’t think it would be that hard and such to find an assessment date. But looking at dates it was like only one assessment available. So I did shoot an email to the organiser asking a bit about the event. Like, ”Do you have a mentor? Are you ready?” Well I have the mentor part down. Ready? Am I Paul? Yes you are! So I did sign up for the certification. And it was here things got hard.
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My guests wanted to move guiding from Monday to Tuesday. I was luckily able to do it. Forecast for Monday was not horrible yet not good either, wind and possibly light rain. For Tuesday it was same temps about +4 celsius, yet no wind and no rain.
So circumstances was much better on Tuesday to have first casting experience and also fly fishing. We decided to fish our lake instead river as both would be difficult but at lake we would have one hour more instead driving one hour to river.
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This week's fly isn't the one I was going to do, but I was inspired by a conversation about boobies, the bans they often face and if there were any workarounds.
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James and I are preparing to fly to France tomorrow (or today when you are reading this) as we have been invited by the Fly Casting Lab to compete in two fly casting competitions at the Argentat Fly Fishing show. The first is indoors to music and the second outside over grass. We're spending a couple of days first touring that area of France and it looks as if we'll be lucky with the weather. We visited the show last year and we're looking forward to revisiting the area.
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Slightly disorganised, because my guest arrived yesterday instead of tonight. How I managed to mix that up I’ll never know! Fortunately the boat is stocked, meals prepared, flies tied, and as of writing this FP, the boat is clean!
I had planned a 21K run and some more supplies. But we will survive!
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Living in Wisconsin, I have come to embrace the changing of the seasons. “Winter is coming whether you like it or not. Throw the winter emergency kit in your car and be prepared.” The wife and I have been fortunate enough to not have any extremely harsh winters (except that polar vortex our first winter here) since we moved here, but Mother lets us know what she is capable of from time to time. I experience the world in two seasons Lake Run On and Lake Run Off. There is an obvious reason for this. There is a chance on any given day during Lake Run On that you might be out fishing and break the brown trout world record. 30-40 + inch browns and rainbows are my idea of a good time, and I therefore plan for the run, adjust my active fly rod quiver, tie some different flies, clean off all the waders, prep the fly wagon, and generally prepare for war. That time is now. The run has begun, and we are just now getting reasonable enough weather conditions to get out there.
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My head is full of noise and news - always (I’ll keep my complaint brief - see below). My meditation practice is on the ropes. I have had a cold for the last week and it sapped my motivation to do much of anything. But I have been getting out to the park to cast with my HT10 in preparation for redfish next week. I had ordered a new SA WF9F Redfish Warm and instead received a SA WF9F Infinity. It could have been my error but was certainly serendipitous. I love it. The Infinity has a long belly. I feel like it gives me the ability to carry more line improving accuracy beyond 40 feet. It’s a half size heavy and the WF9 works beautifully with my HT10. While it’s not listed for the salt, I can’t imagine why? Buoyancy - who cares? Would ride high. I can’t imagine a corrosive attack on the coating. We’ll see if it gets too flexible or sticky at 80 deg. F. I bet it will be fine. In any case I’m bringing my HT8 as well paired with a WF8F Bonefish taper, which I know will perform nicely in the Delta. Brian Boehm has plenty of stuff should mine be less than optimal. It would be super if I could successfully use the equipment I’ve been practicing with.
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I have mentioned before that the season for seatrout differs a lot along the Swedish coast. Some areas are open the year around. Many of the areas with different rules closes at September 30, many of them open at January 1. The general area I fish in open at April 1 and closes at September 30, with a little exception. A “small” part of the area has an exception, here we are allowed to fish until October 14. We call these the bonus weeks.
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Last weekend we had first reindeer slaughter and reindeer season is opened now. Mondsy I was able to "finish" paddock extension as I made gate so now it is "ready". Well I have to fix gate, make 3 more gate from old to new and I need built other extension for our boys on other paddock. So lot of work still be done.
This week has been really rainy so I didn't mind to be shortly in military service. Weekend looks really wet also and as temperatures are around 6 celsius it will be mostly indoor life. It gives time to read and maybe finish book I started to read now and then. Book is "Fit to fish, how to tackle fishing injuries". I don't know if you know the book, it tells how some injuries will come during casting and fishing, how to avoid them and if you got one how to recover. I think writers are doctor and physiotherapist and both do fly fishing and have been given treatment to fisherman.
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It seems like it would make sense to follow on from last week’s floating fry with a look at some subsurface options for targeting fry feeders. Perhaps not as visually exciting as topwater, but still a very good option.
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Growing up in the lush green countryside of Ireland it didn’t take me long before I began to explore my surroundings. The walk to my local shop at a young age took me over an old stone bridge. I would peer over and look at the brown trout as they lay still occasionally moving for a nymph or fly that was travelling down their food lane. At times the trout would dart off faster than my eyes could follow, leaving me trying to chase a shadow. It wasn't long before I realised it was my shadow that was cast on the riverbed as I peered over that caused the Trout to show me their shadow. A lesson that stayed with me throughout my fly-fishing career and certainly helped me claim a few fish I wouldn't have caught without my shadow knowledge.
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One of the most interesting aspects of flycasting coaching is experimenting. A long time ago I realised it was easier to make stroke changes in a different stroke. There is obviously some science behind this and it’s easier to make a big change than a small one. It’s easier to work on a similar part of a pattern in another stroke that isn’t cemented. For the same reason that taking a strategic break from training a certain discipline, can often allow new summits to be reached once the training resumes.
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I promised Rickard I would return to this topic at my earliest convenience. It turns out Rickard was surprised to discover that many people think that accuracy and distance fly casting are distinctly different things. People might even put you into one or the other category as a fly fisher. We all must understand that the ability to cast distance comes at a great cost. You must learn to cast a rod straight to and straight away from your target while also being able to maintain control over the loop you are forming. The better you are at those things the more potential you have to cast a fly “far.”
(With a Morpheus voice)
What if I were to tell you that casting accurately required the same skills necessary to cast long distances?
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~~Pigeons on the grass, alas. Pigeons on the grass, alas. ~~ Finally I’m home after the Big Bye-Bye. I’ve yet to wet my feet but have brought my practice back to the grass in Pan Pacific Park after nearly a month-long hiatus. And the grass is a mess. I was thinking, “boy that didn’t take long.” But have realized that time is racing and the winter seeding sprouted a cover that has lasted an entire summer of dog play and kid games. The rains and re-seeding should be coming soon enough.
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I really wish I was on my way to the UK at the moment of writing this to attend the BFCC meeting in Brentwood. But I cannot fit it in my schedule. Hopefully I will be able to attend some meeting next year. I wish all attendees fair conditions and beautiful casts!
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Saturday morning I slept little longer, long days with paddock and some stress about other things, so I thought now I can take longer sleep and take it slowly. My plan was have some fishing despite weather.
I had totally forgot that someone would come with hunting dog to see how it react with reindeer. Or more like it shouldn't react as reindeers are totally wrong game. So I woke on that call that what time they could come and also message that could I go with our dogs to move reindeers from one cape.
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This week's fly of the week is going to be pretty timely if you're in the temperate part northern hemisphere. As the weather starts to cool off many fish whether it be trout, perch, bass or another species will be turning their attention to this year's fry in a bid to put on condition before winter. So, I'm going to look at floating fry today.
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This is going to be a very quick FP as we've just got back from casting practice on our usual field. Our usual field is right by Tracy's parents house, so popping out to do a bit of fluff chucking also means that we get 'chores' to do – sorting out IT issues etc. This has it's advantages mind you, as such chores usually are rewarded with wine, however tonight (as I write) I passed on the offer of a red.
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.jfif "Can't Beat A Fry Up")
