Mika Lappalainen | Friday, 8 March 2019
It has been long time, too long time that I have been tying flies. Almost every day I’m thinking about it but… there is always excuse and not even good ones. It is same when you should practise your casting. I had to admit that, I have good reason for why I’m not practising my casting so much during wintertime but tying… I have been just lazy. When I’m doing 10-12 hours days with reindeer and we have daylight about 4-6 hours. Well, you can realize that all casting practise would be in the dark. I don’t want to do it dark because I want to film my casting and see what line and rod is doing. But tying…. laziness.
Few weeks ago I was thinking about one trip, I had with guests couple of years ago. Lady was really excited about fly fishing even it was her first time (and probably because of that she was excited). I had feeling that we will meet again because she was filling to learn and wanted to start fly-fishing. I didn’t hear from her over two years and then she contacted me. She wanted to learn fly tying, so she would have flies for coming summer. So we chat and found date for this Tuesday.
We set everything ready for the evening with my dauhgters. They wanted to join also for this tying session. They have been tying their first flies when they were something like 4 years old. We haven’t been tying together so much but when we do it is fun. Now my younger daughter got business idea, she is 12 years, she want to learn tying so she can sell flies on our website. I’m not sure if it is good business but main thing is that she wants to learn and tie (in Finnish tie means road) flies. Today when you are reading this we will be tying flies together with her. That what I call quality time with kids. She is also doing some training about casting when we watch TV. She just practise range of motion with her hand. ( she has difficulties with coordinating her moves, eyes and hands. So this is big thing for her and for me. And I’m so proud that she wants to learn casting and tying, which will be challenging for her)
But back to lesson. So we went thru some basics about tools, flies and how to use them. Then we tied two flies. Basicly just to get idea how to do it, went thru some different techniques about tying. She was making notes and lot of questions and so were my daughters. I had good time and that reminds me how much I love teaching and guiding, sharing my knowledge. I gave to my guests some homework and we will have new tying lesson after two weeks. Also we can have some casting practise because it start to be daylight until 7 pm allready.
Next week I will be in Russia for snowmobiling and then just short break at home to write next FP, and then to Sweden for guiding snowmobiling. After that we will have next session and I will start tying flies also for myself.
Point of this? Don’t give excuses for yourself, it doesn’t matter if it is about tying or casting. Do it.
Have a nice weekend
Mika from Finland
ps. writing this went really late. Kids have winter holiday and we have been doing lot of things together. This evening we tested some dishes for coming summer, like reindeer tartar and so on.
Pss. Happy international women's day, ladies
