Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 23 May 2026
This week has passed my by fast, very fast. A lot of the time has been spent in meetings with the Swedish casting federation with talks about the upcoming World Championships and preparation of materials around those discussions. Not a day too late so to say.
And I have been fishing a little. Me and Ronja took a walk to a trout lake in the forrest to check out if there were some action going on. A little bit some waking fish and some caddis hatching. On our way to the lake I saw a common slow worm. Ronja didn’t see it and just walked right over it. Interesting name slow worm. In Swedish it is called copper lizard or copper snake. It is apparently a lizard, without legs and looks lika a snake. And it can lose its tail, as it is a lizard.
By the lake I had some coffee and shared some biscuits with Ronja. It was a good time just hanging out in the forest. Ronja decided to take a swim while I was looking for fish. A suspiciously loud splash in the water. I don’t think the swim was planned though. And she looked a bit unhappy afterwards. She likes being around water and find things about it interesting, except for swimming. And when things get very interesting it can sometimes be hard to stay on land.
There were some waking fish and some did even show up in casting range even if we seemed to be at the wrong part of the lake. But my streaking caddis wasn’t interesting.
I also found some flies other anglers had left in a tree and was able to get them away.
I’ve had a look at the broken CCS database. Well the PHP code doesn’t match the version installed and when that was fixed there was an other problem. It seems like the whole database is gone. Someone happen to have a backup?
And something else.
I do stumble upon really old discussions from time to time and as I said they are the same as the discussions going on now. But there are still nuances to be found in each discussion I’ve realised so the old discussions can be valuable to read. And I will highlight some interesting things I have found recently.
“The stiffest rod you can control is the one you casts the furthest with”, not totally bad. But what does control mean? And a bit further down in the discussion “very stiff 7wt rods” as very stiff for 5wt distance. https://web.archive.org/web/20121025023313/http://sexyloops.se/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=162
And the agreement that there is a limit to how stiff is actually beneficial.
“Ultimately, it's about finding a rod you enjoy and believe in.”, this is probably the best one I’ve seen. Because there is some truth to the statement the rod doesn’t matter that much, you have to believe in it. https://web.archive.org/web/20121005020055/http://sexyloops.se/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=533
Then later in the discussion it derails into an other favourite, what’s a 5 wt rod.
I think this gives a good description of what the best distance rod is. A rod that is not too soft and not too stiff. And most importantly something you like and believe in. Find a rod like that. Cast it a lot, and show up to some competitions.
Cheers, Rickard