What an incredible weekend of rugby. Just amazing and what a conclusion to perhaps the most fascinating Six Nations tournament ever!! That was worth staying up for. Even if the France-England kick-off for me was at 4.10am! Talk about stepping up for high pressure moments.
The final kick of the tournament… success wins the match and the tournament. Missing not only loses the match but also the tournament. Millions of people watching. And Ramos kicks the ball dead straight between the uprights. Brilliant. Just brilliant.
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Spent last Monday with Makani Christiansen. I was wrong about his service last week. He's a Marine not a sailor. We fished a big offshore shallow flat in Kaneohe Bay within sight of a well known sandbar where locals and tourists go to picnic and turtle-watch.
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Not long until we are in April. Something a lot of fishermen have been waiting for. It is time for seatrout fishing. It will be interesting to see how this season starts as it has been very cold until recently.
And as usual I haven’t tied a fly during the whole winter. Not that it would be possible anyway as that would mean that I would have to fish with old flies and old ideas. The best fly in the box is always the newest one you tied. The latest idea tends to be the most interesting to tie on when you are at the water.
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Friday 13th, some could say it is bad luck day. When I was working for Finnish army, it was kind of lucky day as salary was paid 15th of month and if it was 13th Friday... it was payment day. I'm writing this FP on Thursday evening, so I don't know what Friday 13th is bringing. I expecting worst and hoping best.
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This week it's the Sedotti slammer. Ages ago I wrote an FP about Mark Sedotti's weighting system that allows large flies to be cast with relative ease. It's essentially the opposite of what was, for the longest time, the received wisdom on big flies.
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There really are just not enough hours in the day at the moment! Many of my Zoom students are coming out of hibernation. The good thing about the US clocks change is that instead of teaching flycasting using the stern floodlight at night, is that I can be up early in the morning, teaching during my sunrise. No wasps! I don’t know why wasps come out at night in the jungle but they do. It can be entertaining but sometimes I could do with a little bit less entertainment in my life.
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We are waiting on rod tubes and components and then Andy is going to be in a tornado of his own. I’m looking forward to seeing this happen. As soon as we have supplies we will plan far enough ahead that we don’t run out. That’s always fun.
Over in Europe we are starting to get Spring orders for the Tortuga. So if you are after arguably the best fly rods in the galaxy then please get in touch!
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What an extraordinary 6 Nations rugby weekend! Rugby is one of those sports that if you grow up playing, then you enjoy watching when you are too old or sensible to play. I, like I’m sure many others, am less interested in seeing a particular team win than I am in seeing a great game played. I grew up playing no8, then moved to blind-side when I stopped growing taller. Wasn’t really fast enough off the mark to be an open-side, but that was my favourite position.
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I’m flying to Honolulu but I’ll have to wait until Monday to test out my new soft-gaze on the local bonefish. I’ll be fishing then with Makani Christiansen who hosts Fly Fish Hawaii. Not sure what we’ll be doing. I hope the joint military bases are fishing well. Makani served in the navy and has access to some beautiful wadeable beaches and inside-the-reef flats. But every place he’s taken me to, on foot or from the boat, on the base and off, has been great.
I have been practicing the soft gaze in the park, by focusing on a distant point and looking for movement within a fixed wide window. So far what I observe is that out-of-pattern off-center movement immediately draws my eyes to its source. Could this be what I’m looking for? I’ll see (ha ha).
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I recently was saked to help to design a fly casting challenge/competition. It should be used for a remote cup in Sweden, it should work for both beginners and offer something for more experienced casters. It was decided to be an accuracy challenge and introduce the caster a bit to the discipline. We settled for two hula hoops as targets, 60-80 centimetres in diameter. This choice was made since it is close enough to the real targets and is easy to obtain. I also decided to put the closest target at 10 meters and not 8 meters. This might be surprising to some people, especially those who have not done a round of accuracy targets. But I think that a target at 8 meters or closer to the caster is a hard cast.
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Last weekend was something we have never done before, at least this time of the season. Before Covid we use to have night over in Rovaniemi or if lucky even two nights. Afterwards it feels funny as before Covid you could actually find hotel room with decent price and even get one.
Now if you look prices in short notice in Rovaniemi, you have to pay easily 300e/night, which is double before Covid. So when we started to have idea having break, Rovaniemi was out from list, not only because price. Another reason was that we had no desire to spent our holiday with tourist.
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As we return to the fly of the week, I thought I'd look at the pattern I mentioned in last week's coverage of the 3wt Cup: the deadly crystal shrimp.
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Tracy and I are not long back from our trip to Spain to compete in the 'Master De Lanzado A Mosca' casting event organised by the CNL (Comision Nacional De Lanzado). We had a really great weekend, made even better by the weather – in contrast to the rain, snow and hail of last year we had lovely warm sunshine. In fact it was the first time this year that I've cast in just a T-shirt, that said most of the Spanish casters were still wearing thick coats and hats, so I guess our definition of 'warm' differs considerably.
After some morning sight seeing and a leisurely lunch in Guadalajara on the Friday we were invited to a presentation 'evening' at the Fly Centre in the outskirts of Madrid. When I messaged to say we were heading over I was corrected regarding the time – apparently in Spain anything up to 9pm is the afternoon no matter how dark it is. Unfortunately we got delayed in the afternoon rush hour traffic on the A2 and didn't arrive in time for the presentations, but we did get there for cheese and wine and socialising outside of the tackle shop. After picking up some fly tying supplies and some big streamer flies (hopefully for chucking at cudas and sharks in a few weeks) we headed back to Guadalajara for a couple of beers and an early(ish) night before the casting competition the next day.
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Now this might seem like I’m the last person to issue this sort of advice. I must have broken a couple of hundred fishing rods. I’ve cast them to death, I’ve jumped on them, I’ve thrown them over cliffs, I’ve driven over them, I’ve driven away from them while leaving them on the car roof, I’ve broken them trying to unstick from snags and of course I’ve been unlucky.
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Since we announced that Andy Dear is building Sexyloops rods in Texas, there has been significant interest in purchasing rod blanks. Thank you! However, unfortunately we are not set up to sell blanks in the US. We have sold a couple in the past to long-term Sexyloops’ readers, who enjoy building their own rods at home. Not many; a small handful. But more than this doesn’t work for a few reasons…
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I am seated at Nassau’s Lynden Pindling airport waiting for my flight to Los Angeles, reviewing my return trip to Acklins. First, the experience and skill of this year’s group members blew me away. They were all fine fellows and their enthusiasm, diverse interests and good will added joy and energy to our outings. I hope to fish with them again. Sticking with Getaway Flyfishing will make this a real possibility.
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