It’s Sunday at the time of writing this. Yesterday night I had my weekly in-boat endurance bike ride. Indoor riding I find harder than outdoors. But indoor-riding, when it’s 32->28C and 80->98% humidity, is an absolute kiler. I have two small fans that blow warm hunid air at me as I ride. 5hrs and 150 virtual KM. There is absolutely no way I could run a marathon after this. It’s far harder than 180KM outdoors. Still that’s why I do it! It makes the outdoor 180KM Ironman ride seem like a pleasant training ride in the park.

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It's early autumn now, as is the way of New Zealand, and in Auckland the ever-present wind is here to greet me. I launched early and went looking for fish, not sure what target species would show.

Classic harbour fishing. Boats on the move, a tanker sliding past, the Waiheke ferry thumping through. Not quite what you picture when you think fly fishing, but that's part of the appeal. Auckland is busy, noisy and working, and the fish are there anyway. Plus it's close and doesn't involve a big drive. Although I must admit I'm starting to feel the pull of winter trout fishing — with the right timing it can be productive in the limited open waters around the country, and the boat might come in handy for a few of those adventures. That's for another day.

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We've had a two consecutive days off from fishing this week, both due to a weather system that brought 40kph winds, thunderstorms, torrential tropical rain and wall to wall heavy cloud cover.  It must be tough for people who are on a week long fishing break knowing that a third of their fishing time has been lost due to the conditions, however Tracy and I can be a bit more relaxed about it given the length of our stay.  In fact, I think it's fair to say that we both needed a rest as we'd been hitting the flats pretty hard, spurred on by some great fishing.

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This week's fly is Bob Popovics' siliclone. Like so much of what sprang from his mind it’s deadly. In my opinion it’s probably the best mullet imitation ever devised and unlikely to be superseded.

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Warm weather is still here. Snow and ice circumstances are similar than normally two weeks from now. Good thing is that it is clear weather or at least not raining anything.
 
We are still hoping to have ice fishing group end of this month. There is small change that it will happen as this week we have had some cold nights around - 7 celsius and even days have been barely zero or just above in sun. Wind has been helping also so spring has been slowing down.

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So after practicing in the park with the 20’ leader for a few days, I had a chance Sunday, to see what it would take to fish it in the river and to find out how the carp like it.  

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