Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 2 August 2025
There seem to be a bit scarce with mackerel here at the moment. That were the reports I did get during last week and I didn’t catch any. I didn’t see very much baitfish in the ocean either, and the mackerel seem to know about that for some reason. I hope there is some baitfish and mackerel in the ocean between Sweden and Denmark because soon the tuna will get here. We aren’t allowed to fish for them. Which is good because last time we did we fished them so hard they went away. The tuna were gone for about 50 years and have finally returned in schools.
I did catch some seatrout though. Most of them by dredging. That is quite fun. Short casts with sinking lines and waiting. Let the line go deep and most of the time strip home quite fast. The strikes are usually intense. It feels like the fly just stops and then the fighting begins.
When standing there and waiting for the line to sink you have some time to think. One thing I was thinking about was advantages of fly fishing compared to spin fishing, even for coastal fishing. We have some disadvantages also, it is hard to match the speed of the retrieve, casting distance and sink rate of a metal jig. But other things we can do that can be quite advantageous are that we can cast around rocks, and use the same technique to layout interesting paths for our fly in the water and follow structure in interesting ways. We can reposition our fly fast, see hunting fish in some other place we can usually lift and reposition fast. When we fish from the shore the water can be very shallow and snaggy near the shore we can lift the fly over this where a spin fisher would be stuck. And we can do this from a low position so we can be more stealthy. Which is good as the fish quite often is near the shore. Especially now when the fish wants to be near the deep water but goes hunting in the seaweed along the shore. We can let our fly hang, something that is harder for a spin fisher, depending on weight of fly and line. Sometimes this is super effective. The same thing also allows us to fish shallower waters. We can fish smaller things, some days we cannot present lures big enough but most of the time small lures have an edge. A spin fisher can present a small lure with a bombarda or similar but with loss of presentation and feel. And sometimes the seatrout goes crazy on some bug that is being blown into the water that day, then the seatrout can become as selective as a stream trout during a hatch. Then the spin fisher is totally lost. A fly fisher that is prepared can have a great time. A kit for seatrout isn’t complete without a floating line and some dry flies. But that isn’t me most of the time, I prefer a small kit.
So when thinking of all advantages I have with a fly rod I got an idea. How about if I did a curve cast or snap cast to present the fly as if it was fleeing out of the seaweed and then back into the seaweed again? It didn’t work very well. A sinking line cuts very well through the air, but it also cuts very well through water. So I didn’t get same curve during the retrieve as I had casted. The line became straight before any movement of the fly did happen.
Cheers, Rickard
PoD: Some dredging action.