Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 5 July 2025
I’m not a fan of Paul’s launch drill. I find it hard, awkward and too honest. A mistake and you get punished directly. That’s why I have ignored it, and now I have to pay the price I haven’t done before. I need to spend time on the damn drill. But that could be good. All my casting is crap at the moment. So something to get me back on track. The only thing that I’m somewhat happy with is my roll cast and Speys. But they are good. Which is nice since I will soon be on a fishing trip where I guess I will use those casts more than my distance cast. Just don’t tell Minna. She thinks we are going on a vacation. Didn’t she notice that the cabin we are going to stay in is located next to a river?
Going on a fishing trip means new flies. For some reason the old flies are now just space invaders in the boxes. So I have been tying some new flies. At first I was sure that I would definitely need to buy some new materials for tying. I opened up my material storage and said to myself, I have nothing to tie with. Went online to buy some new stuff. Then decided that I should give my stash of material another chance. Turns out I had plenty of material to use. And I have mostly been using a pheasant feather, a bag of hare dubbing and a patch of deer fur. My fly boxes starts to look like a collection of something you find under the bed. Some hairs there, and some dusters of something. I like sparse flies. Like the devil bug.
I have updated my Tick-borne encephalitis shot. I don’t like needles. Getting pierced by a hook I have no problems with. But needles I handle badly. I made some progress by donating blood. Until the last time I went. Then I became very pale and started to sweat like crazy. But TBE sounds pretty bad so protection from that is a good idea. Even if the ticks aren’t very found of me it only takes one bite.
And a tip I forgot in my previous FP about the roll cast. Having trouble with the roll cast? Not getting nice loops? Think of this \\/, what we want is this / and not /_ that. Be very short and abrupt in your power application, that might help you get a better roll cast. Just focus on this / a very narrow arc. And the more line you can get behind you the easier it will be. So if you have the possibility take a couple of steps back and forward when you setup the cast, to get a lot of line in the D-loop. Flick the cast away with a nice loop. When you have that feeling down you can progress to less line in the D-loop. On water you can get away with a quite small D-loop after a while.
Next FP I hope I have some nice fishes to report to you.
Cheers, Rickard
PoD: The devil bug