In my opinion AI is total bollocks!!! Anyone who has tried to navigate the complete incompetence of AI virtual “assistants” will know what I’m talking about. It is so incredibly frustrating. Is this really the future that everyone wants? We can’t talk to a real person now, but instead a completely useless AI bot? Who is that helping exactly? It’s certainly not helping me – the customer.

Vast amounts of money are being spent on this display of incompetence. Why not instead invest this money in real people? In society, health and education. Jobs are being taken away from people, who were actually quite capable at doing this work, and instead being given to annoyingly stupid systems that don’t work!!

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Paul messaged me the other day to say a cyclone was coming in. I confirmed that yes, one was indeed on the way. His response was not concern for life or property, but encouragement to go and try for 200 feet in the wind. There is nothing quite like a challenge from Paul to get me out there on a stormy day.

Staying motivated is important. With casting, there comes a point where improvement stops being accidental and starts requiring actual work. Someone I used to train with in another sport had a rule: don't practice the 80% you can already do, practice the 20% you are not so good at. That's where the gains are. So I appreciated the message. It was well timed.This is not a story of training that 20%, but at least the weather conditions are difficult and mastery of this represents improvements.

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If anyone asks “how's the fishing going in the Bahamas”, my initial response is “it's very very windy!” however it is also amazing. Besides catching the fish, there's lots of ospreys pretty much on every flat we go to (they seem as common here as red kites in Oxfordshire), plus rays, a few of which I have nearly stood on before they have startled and fled away. The one positive about the strong winds is that they keep you cool in this heat, a downside is that besides making the casting tricky, the constant waves can drag your fly line before you've started to strip the fly, sometimes causing the hook to snag something on the bottom. I've had this a few times where the snag has such a hold of the fly that I can't move it and I've just had to frustratingly watch the bones move around where the fly is – where I could have got a take, or if not, could have recast a few times to improve the chances of catching one of them. On these occasions I pray that the bone may dig up the snagged fly, however this has only happened on one occasion that I remember.

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If you read these regularly, you'll maybe have noticed that I strongly prefer deer hair for my topwater bass bugs. I'm absolutely convinced it's the best choice for most freshwater situations.

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That's old saying in Finland, not sure if you are familiar with this. It refers to the typical, harsh and dramatic depiction of nature in Russian films. And wind on those is very strong, cutting or chilling. If you think about  you can even hear it fi-uuuuuu.
 
Last weekend we handled our reindeers at farm and drove Satu's reindeers to little north and enjoy summer, calfing is just behind corner, well in one month. They got gps devices so it gives us peace of mind.
 
Weather has been mostly sunny and warm and we have been having two ice fishing day during week, not huge success yet some decent perch to cook. It has been little slower life, except Wednesday.

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”The first 30 feet excluding the level excluding the level tip.”

I’ve been sick since the last FP. I started to get sick somewhere around last Wednesday. Some mild fever, a bit of coughing, a bit stuffy nose, a bit tired. Nothing too bad, but too bad to do anything. So not the best time. No fishing, a few minutes of casting. Actually some quite good casting, which is good as I’m arranging a competition next Saturday. Today Friday is the first day since I started to get sick that I’m feeling somewhat fine. I don’t think my swimming last week is to blame for me getting sick. But one thing is for sure it didn’t make me feel better or more healthy, like some cold swimmers like to claim. It seems like the first rule of winter swimming is to talk about winter swimming.

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