I’ve mentioned it before; at this time of year in the jungle, bees find my socks irresistible. Although because I don’t wear socks nowadays – for the obvious reason – it is my bike shoes that are the next best thing. Bees adore them. They sneak in at first light, while I’m trying to sleep in the hammock, and try to fly off with my shoes.

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was the time of the year when I'd been very busy. Christmas time. My children are getting older and holidays as a family are changing. They had their own ideas and wanted to go with their own friends. I'd been doing a lot of casting practice with Paul, and he'd suggested that the snakehead fishing was excellent if I had an opportunity, the quicker I could get up there the better. Both Paul and I knew that my casting, while a lot better, still had some flaws, particularly around accuracy. I knew the fish were hard. But nothing like catching up with someone you respect and appreciate in a spectacular location like the Malaysian jungle.

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A simple job this week. The mylar floating minnow. It's a popular pattern here in Japan, especially a version called the Iwai minnow.

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We started from home Monday morning at 7 am and arrived to Ljubljana on Tuesday morning 5 am. You could say it is long way to the top if you want rocknroll. First two hour car drive to Rovaniemeltä, then 4 hour flight to Bergamo, italy. We didn't risk to get bus on time so we took later bus to Venice. While waiting we had late lunch and walk in huge mall. In Venice we had several hours stop which we spent in snack bar with beer. And then last leg which was 3 hours in bus.
 
We didn't sleep much and it was not good sleep, yet here we are. Tuesday our friend and guide picked us up from bus and we had short sleep in accommodation before picking up rental car and having breakfast. Tuesday was shopping and resting day after travelling. In evening we ended up to do wine tasting for Slovenian wine, from certain farm. Great day and evening.

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I’ve touched on the idea that the biceps has an important role for the fly caster. Now I’ve picked up some new ideas here. How to improve the training of the biceps. If you let your arms hang to the side and externally rotate your arms, let the palm of your hands point forward, your arms will angled out from the body. This is called the carrying angle. This is an angle we don’t spend much time in. Many of us spend a lot of time in the complete opposite angle as we spend a lot of time in front of a computer.

Having the arms by the side externally rotated in the “carrying position” is a good position to fully stretch the long head of the biceps muscle. This ties into the ability to rotate the forearm. And why do we want that? By restoring and having better movement in the chain we are less likely to get pain in the chain or help reduce pain if we have any. So this is something the fly caster wants to avoid or recover from pain in the arm from casting. And almost all casting we are doing we are working with the biceps in a shortened state so we are adding to the problem.

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never made it back out to the beach this week. Hamstrung by appointments (I’ll spare you the organ recital) and a blown head gasket on the carro rojo, I was limited to dry practices. It’s probably just as well as I’ve had to prepare and pack for a five week trip east. My next stop is Sarasota where I’m gonna spend a few days fishing with my buddy Brian then to New York, Wyoming, New York, Florida then home. 

I’ve been to the park every other day and things have been going well there. On Tuesday, I stumbled upon an unadvertised political stop of Tom Steyer’s gubernatorial campaign as he was being introduced  by Jane Fonda. I couldn’t get over her fabulous thatch of grey hair. Amazing. I voted for Steyer the next day. 

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