Paul Arden | Monday, 29 January 2018
First up, as many of you will know, the World Championships for fly casting with fly fishing tackle are to be held in Cumbria in August 2018. What many of you may not know is that the cut off point for joining the event is April 30th. I've only just found this out myself. It's considerably earlier than previous years and will no doubt cause some team selection problems. Certainly it's sparked us into action over in Jersey. So if you are intending on coming then you will need to work fast.
You can find more details about this event and how to apply here:
http://www.ukflycastingsport.com/fly-casting-world-championships-2018
Next piece of news is that the voting for last two finalists of the Great Hot Torpedo Competition will close next weekend on Saturday 3rd February. Here are your choices:
29 James Evans
28 Carl-Martin Vennefjord
25 Gavan Hennessy
26 Paul Harps
27 Mike Duzynski
24 Graeme Hird
23 Luca Prono
22 Brandon Ho
21 Marc Teng
20 Stuntman Ronan
19 An Ren Tan
18 Tim Kempton
17 Dr Ling
16 Piffen Hammenstig
15 Sean Geer
14 Mike Duzynski
Please make your favourite two entrants known either via Sexyloops Facebook or The Board. Many thanks!!!
I've been out fishing every day this week, which is entirely normal fisherman behaviour. Mostly I've been fishing the Great Lake here in Tasmania. The weather has been on the most part pretty fantastic with many blue sky days.
Something I have realised is that the fishing is more challenging than the previous time I visited. There is considerable more pressure, everywhere, which must have had an impact. For one thing I'm using smaller flies and finer tippets. I didn't start off this way, but have experienced a large number of refusals and "short takes" which I have now solved (to my own satisfaction at least) by fishing skinnier tippet (.14mm for midge feeders in the morning and .16mm for sharking in the afternoons). It's actually made the fishing more interesting.
I've been enjoying my time here fishing - mostly with Bruce lately (who divides his year between Miena and Broome) and I've found myself tying flies and getting more serious about my leaders, trout knots and fishing approach. This has been fun!
I have some "backcountry" fishing lined up to the Western Lakes, although the warm sunny spell we've been experiencing recently is due to crash out this week with a sharp return to low temperatures and overcast skies. This is the Miena I rememeber!
As well as trout fishing I've been busy starting to organise the up-coming fishing season in Malaysia. The fishing is of course all year round, but I still think in terms of seasons and a new one is beginning soon with "Jungle Springtime". Ashly and I are planning on starting a business on the lake hosting and teaching fly fishing. We have a small houseboat that we are arranging to buy. Hot showers!
All in all it's been pretty good. I have three weeks left now here in Tasmania. That will go very quickly!
Lots of new rod blanks arriving this week. We had a large number of post-Xmas sales that has seen us run low on many blanks. So just in the nip of time! Here in Tassie I was fishing the HT4 for all my trout fishing. I've since rigged up the HT6 for "sharking" and the heavier line has been useful for casting across the strong afternoon winds. I still haven't found a use here for the HT8 or HT10 
Good stuff on the Board:
Sharking the Great Lake (great tip on the fourth page about scanning right to left)
Key Casting Drill (useful advice from John Waters)
Sexyloops is 20yrds Old Meet (Wow almost out of our teenage years!!!)
Have a fantastic week.
Cheers, Paul
PS Today's POD is from the World Championship finals in Norway 2014. That's me versus Mikael Blomberg. Thanks Bernd for the photo!