Graeme Christie | Tuesday, 25 August 2026
No trip report again this week. Work is still eating the calendar, and the limestone maps are still sitting half-tested on my phone. But I have been doing some accounting. Not the business kind. I wear a sports watch, and sitting at the desk I pulled my activity data to see what it thinks I do with my life.
Fly casting practice is not on the list. Not under any name. The hours in the park with the HT 6, 7 and 8wt and the orange fluff, the hoops, the 123.4 feet. Invisible. If I want a park session recorded I have to file it under "Other", which is where the watch puts activities it doesn't believe in.
So here is the last six months, according to the watch. Sixty activities, call it 49 hours. Mostly running and football, a few gym sessions, one day's skiing. And zero minutes of casting practice. Something for the sports watch to add. Until then I'll do some fiddling and file it under a description of my own. I've likely fished for 26 days.
A full session of hauling is work. Shoulder, forearm, the line hand, the core turning through every delivery. After a proper distance day I feel it the way I feel a football game, just in different places. The comp casters I think about when I'm chasing numbers train like athletes because they are athletes.
There is a practical side to the running and the gym, beyond keeping the heart going. The limestone streams that opened this winter are small water, walking water. Legs get you to the fish, and a stable core keeps the cast straight on a bank of wet grass. And behind that sits the longer game. Fishing is a sport you can do for life, and I intend to. Rivers don't get easier. Keeping fit now is how you get to keep fishing later, and the motivation is easy to locate when framed that way. The runs are not really about running. It is enjoyment, like the fishing. That's me anyway. I'm aware that not everyone thinks the same way.
The watch wasn't the only thing getting assessed lately. I fished a few of my rods on the last trip, swapping as the water changed. You learn something by doing that. Each one asks for slightly different timing, and it turns out my casting has opinions about which rods it likes.
For my part, I know what I like and it isn't soft. A slow action wants a long pause and a patient stroke, and patience is not my forte. Probably why the HTs and I get along. Though I'll concede the fault may not be entirely the rod's. Give me something crisp and I'll cast all day. Something slow and syrupy, and we've usually not quite carried on.
Next park session the watch comes along, filed under Other. I want to know what a hundred casts does to a heart rate.
There's also some boat work to consider. More performance for fishing and making the engine run more shallow. Maybe they're linked. Something for the future FP.
Tight lines to you all.