Last month saw us giving a heap of stuff away , so without further ado, here are the winners:

Trout Hunting by Bob Wyatt (Autographed – I wrestled the Whiskey glass from his hand while he did it)
Winner: Tina Worsley, Ontario
Congratulations Tina!

Fly Casting Faults and Fixes by Mel Krieger. Kindly donated by Peer Doering-Arjes at www.springforelle.de
The Question was: Tell us the main cause of Tailing loops.
Winner for the best answer was Mark Anawaty from somewhere in the U.S with:
“The MAIN REASON for a tailing loop, and note I am careful to use your words, is that the tip of the rod drops below the straight line path. There can be many causes for this drop, but this is the reason for the tailing loop.
Ya'll make fly fishing a hoot. Keep it up.
Mark Anawaty”

Winner with the worst answer and obviously in most need of help was Alistair Gillon of Poland with:
“To quote Shakespear 'To Beer or not to Beer'. I'm sure there are many other causes to choose from, but none do i know, never mind the main bugger himself. But then, if i knew the answer, what would i need the video for :-)”

Congratulations to both of you – Tight lines!

Overall the answers I got were pretty average, and some were absolute drivel! :-)
If you’d like to understand more about tailing loops, their cause and how to correct them, point your browser to the Sexyloops casting section here

Scientific Anglers Mastery Nymph line.
We asked how many lines there were on the SA site. There’s no right answer for this one as I didn’t count them so have absolutely no idea. But Peter Stoltze of DENMARK listed every single one in his entry, his email ran to 3 pages.

Nice effort Peter, congratulations!

"My dad was and is a fisherman so I had my first rod and line when I was able to hold it. I guess I was about four. And it's been downhill since. Finland isn't the best place for a fly fisherman who hates ice fishing, almost half of the year it's almost a of waste time.

I'm an M.Sc. (tech) by education and my engineerism shows quite often, which seems to annoy some people. My fly fishing career started when I was in high school. A good buddy of mine, with whom I fished a lot, got himself a fly fishing set. Of course, I had to get one too. I really got myself a bad rod, an 11' #7-8 Hørgård , should've asked someone more experienced for an advice. The reel was okay but the line was a floater from Wales. Bumpy start then, but since that I've really grown into FFing and I don't fish other tackle almost at all. I had a dream of fresh 10kg salmon caught with a fly rod and that became reality last summer. Now, I want a bigger one, but what I really want is to try some real saltwater stuff, like trying to get a fight with a giant trevally.

The first time I found Sexyloops I didn't dig in deep and forgot about it. The next time I wondered around Sexyloops, The Board's fly casting section caught my eye and I started posting. Point of no return had passed and I became a regular. My casting has improved a lot after that since I've started thinking what I do. I used to just fish and bother less about the casting, except stand in awe as an occasional good caster happened to cast tight loops where I was fishing too. With improved casting abilities I actually have to think less about the casting and still reach those fish I didn't before - that means more fish.

So, Finland then - how is it? We used to have absolutely great trout fishing (before I was born). Industry, timber rafting etc spoiled it pretty much. There are still some places with great fishing but many of them are beyond normal people. There is still some good trout fishing in Central Finland where the rapids between lakes are the places where trout come to feed and spawn. Northern Finland (Lapland) is quite good for salmon, trout, grayling and char fishing. Still, I go after those species in Sweden and Norway, which, I think, are both better in that respect, especially for fly fishing.

The local fishing around Helsinki where I live is either muddy river fishing or sea fishing for trout or pike. I'm not all excited about pike so that narrows the possibilities down even more. The Baltic raises very good sized salmon and trout, but the number of them in the rivers is a bit low, the number of trout in the sea is fortunately getting better after a long decline.

Oh, and yes, I'm a tackle tart."

No, Morises not reviewing his own stuff. Magnus Angus gives Morsies latest book the once over...

Saltwater Fly Fishing Fundamentals
An introduction to Saltwater Fly Fishing

By Peter Morse
Published by Flylife Publishing Pty Ltd
ISBN 0 9587294 1 7

Interesting book to review; nice layout, illustrated with black and white photographs and line drawings; in a sense, this whole book is a series of questions and answers, the contents pages is a list of questions, repeated in the margins of the relevant pages. The writing is direct and highly readable, although set up for me to find answers to questions, reading from cover to cover is no hardship. It would be easy to overload a book like this with personal anecdote, Morse does include wee stories but uses them sparingly and always to the point.

The older I get, and the longer I keep at it, the more I become convinced that the first and really only important thing you need for good fly fishing is feeding fish. This season down south, I had my nose rubbed in that proposition more times than was necessary. The way it works, by my reckoning, is that a trout’s activity is simply wired to its food supply, to the degree that it takes the presence of food to awaken its predatory behaviour. In other words, trout aren’t always in a predatory state – for much of the time they are switched off. No amount of good tactics, presentation or excellent fly tying is going to make much difference. Despite our homocentric view of things - that what we do is the most important thing happening out there - it’s a feeding fish that is going to take the fly.

Once in a while it happens – you accidentally damage your flyline. If it happens on a bush-trip it can really mess up your trip. There are of course many different things that can happen to a flyline, but generally most damage can be put into two categories: 1, Damage to the coating and 2, damage to the core (even breaking the line in two). Believe it or not – both can be fixed with few materials – materials that you can easily include in your kit so that you have them with you all the time.

Well, here it is.
There are competitions and then there are Sexyloops competitions, and then there are full expeditionary force, camo’ wearing midnight raids on the Sage factory where we kidnap Jerry Seim and swap him for a heap of great Sage gear! Of course Paul fell over a lot and broke some rods, and we forgot to take Jerry with us. But we did manage to get away with a new FLi, a TCR and a 2550 reel, and over the next few issues we’ll be giving away our ill gotten gains to you lot.

This month it’s the FLi up for grabs, and you can soak up the graphite flavoured goodness here

I seem to recall Jerry mumbling something about the fact that all Sage Rods are made with tender loving care at their Bainbridge Island plant, in Washington. That they like seeing them built, testing the manufacturing runs, and otherwise knowing for sure what's going on with their product. Which is all very nice, and we only put this bit in so Sage won’t press any charges.

Here’s how to win the FLi and keep Paul out of prison.
At the very bottom of this Snapcast there’s a little blue link that says Forward email.
We want you to forward this email to a friend, or multiple friends if you have them.
Now, believe it or not, we want to exercise some integrity here, and contrary to the Sexyloops spirit that means some rules.
1. This has to be a genuine friend – no SPAM, and we can tell if it is (yes really)
2. It has to be forwarded in a genuine manner to someone who is interested in Fly fishing and will benefit from the wonderous experience of reading this newsletter and Sexyloops.
3. It cannot be sent to your Dog, mother-in- law or great uncle Enus (unless of course they are anglers)
4. They cannot already be a signed up Snapcast reader. (You may not actually know, so we may have to let that one slide, but you won’t get an entry – Sorry, Paul made me say that)
5. Forward it to someone you believe will benefit from owning a good quality Sage Fly Rod (mates do that)
For each forwarded Snapcast and subsequent new member – we’ll enter you and your friend in the FLi sweepstake.You can fight over who gets to use it later
You can have multiple friends – Friends with multiple personalities get extra points.

If you have any problems getting signed up, just go directly to our signup form here

Here's this months G-Spot from Eric.

East from an epic sea, from cold springs and the mountains' feet, this river leads to the door below. Forget the silver payment for your aged and hammer-toting woeful river guide, and he'll drop you on the painful banks of a nearby river for a hundred years where it would be best to soak your heels.

What happens when 25 ‘loopers from around the globe get together to swap their favorite fly patterns? Apart from a logistical nightmare you get something pretty amazing. Check out the thread – it’s been running since December last year. Then take a look at the results. Big thanks to Roy for organising and running it (and taking care of postage I believe) and TZ for photographing the flies and HTML'ifying the results.

The new years fly swap thread

TZ's site with the results

What do we have in store for you next time? Well, anything is possible and surprises are probable. On the rack so far:
A comp’ to give away a sexy Vosseler vice
An article on the ins and outs of cane
A DVD review
A new agony column from Doris, if she decides to cooperate
And a whole bunch of other stuff we’ve not made up yet, so stay tuned!