Tracy&James | Thursday, 23 April 2020
We’ve spent this last week coming up with casting challenges with an MPR as that’s the only thing we can cast in our garden. We’ve had to replace the wool-end of the rope with something less ‘grabby’ as our artificial grass is really tearing up the wool. Initially I thought the friction was useful when practicing roll casting, until I realised I had left some of the red wool stuck in the grass behind me! The good news is that it’s impossible to blow an anchor though.
Anyway, I’ve been practicing short casts, such as roll casts and reach mends, in preparation for whenever we can go fish the river Dee. I’ve been watching the river levels and with the weather we’ve been having in North Wales, I’m expecting the fishing to be great. I have to make do with going for walks around where I live, to either of the nearby rivers (the Clwyd and the Elwy). Watching to see if the fish are rising, whether there are any insects on the surface or not, as my preference when river fishing is dry fly. I’m trying to convince James to start fly tying, but actually we’ve already got lots of river flies, so he probably doesn’t need to. Instead he’s doing jobs around the house (perhaps pretending to work – he always says his job is thinking about stuff, so I really can’t tell), whilst I’m actually working from home.
I’ve also been practising some casting exercises that James has developed for me to improve my distance casting; one of them is to lay the line down behind me (the MPR rope that is) and then try to ‘thrust’ on the forward cast whilst pantomiming a haul to coincide with peak speed.
When we are able to actually do some distance casting, James has come up with a casting challenge for me – to attempt a 40 yard cast with just one back cast, so in effect a pick-up and lay-down. I’m looking forward to seeing if I can achieve this or not, although I anticipate it’s going to be quite difficult for me.
I hope you are all keeping safe and active – staving off the boredom,
Cheers,
Tracy
