Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 8 March 2025
When spring arrives it isn’t only fishing season that is right around the corner, the competition season coincides with fishing season. So it is time to start to prepare for competitions also. For me it means to get acquainted with the stiffer rods again. I have stepped away from casting distance with my ten and mostly been doing distancish casting with my five and seven.
Especially doing distance related casting with a softer rod designed to be used with a five weight line has given some interesting insights about power and timing. The timing doesn’t really change, but the feedback does. With a weaker rod you cannot muscle through bad timing and still somewhat get away with it.
So with confidence in my back I went out to the field with the ten and thought that I would at least get some decent casts in the ballpark of what I have been getting with the five recently. Nice controlled casts of a full MED.
Nope.
Carry was shit and the line wouldn’t fly. Trying to change things just made things worse. Maybe it was just one of those days where it is best to call quits early.
But it didn’t add up. The wind felt quite good and things should fly. I was getting ready and started to walk home. But soon stopped just to see if I could get in some decent carry. And now things had changed. The line suddenly felt like a greased lightning. Stripping some more line of the reel to try launching it and boom! The line just flew out of the guides and landed a couple of meters in front of the rod tip.
So I got a really good confirmation of what I had suspected before, that my usual spot can be affected by turbulence. Just didn’t know how much.
The field I usually visit for practice is surrounded by many buildings and I usually stand one edge of the field a long a wall buildings. Just to take up as little space as possible of the filed. So this wall and couple of trees can create a wall of turbulence.
And the trout weather? Now warm and soon cold again. We will see how the weather continues after that until opening day…
Cheers, Rickard