Daily Cast Archive

It’s been an interesting week since last time. Last Saturday was spent nervous waiting for a message from Karel as he was doing his CI assessment then. I knew he was ready as I’ve seen his journey and the four hour pretest Paul and I did for Karel the Sunday before the event.  I’m very happy to been part of Karels’ journey to his CI and was soo happy when he passed. Well deserved Karel! Thank you for letting me be part of your journey!

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Weather is pretty much perfect here now. Yes it could be few degrees warmer yet otherwise it is great. Late afternoon with sun it is +20 celsius, nights are around +9 celsius. We have had some rain but not too much. All of these makes rivers perfect, enough water, temperature around +13 celsius, easily under +15 celsius. I would say this has been as perfect as it can be for waters.   Wednesday I had guiding day. I had one lady as fishing guest 9 years ago, week from now it would exactly 9 years. (Had to check from photos). She was travelling to north with her dad, cousins and with her daughters. Younger one was still in manger size and older one could just walk. Older one was playing in river while I taught fly fishing to mom.

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I'm organising my boxes for heading to Scotland next week. I'm expecting most of the fishing to be for bass, mullet and coarse fish given the temperatures, but I have put a coastal seatrout box together just in case it cools down -I hope it does because in Japan it's 39 and incredibly humid here today with more of the same forecast.

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The BFCC casting day at Ashford-in-the-Water in Derbyshire was very well attended and the team were kept very busy either instructing and/or coaching on the competition outfits. The weather was lovely, though the wind was swirly making it challenging for the competition distances and several people, including myself, had moments when the fly leg whipped the back of our legs. Thankfully I'd remembered to wear trousers and a hoody so other than a slight reduction in the line speed, I didn't get 'marked' though I'm sure a few of the others in shorts and t-shirts ended up with a mark or two. Over the years I have seen some amazing 'welts' on the back of casters legs and some on the back of their necks – painful! Regardless we had a great day and had lots of new recruits. We go back to the same area in October for a joint event with GAIA so hopefully lots of these fishers will come along.

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Paul mentioned in his column this week that most of his six kilo plus snakehead have come in late July and August. Think about that sentence for a second. He can only say it because he knows. Years of fish, dates attached. That sentence is a fishing log doing its job. I've just found out what my memory is worth. This month I built a proper log, a spreadsheet, one row per day fished, and backfilled the trips I could reconstruct.

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I don’t know if it was three week’s of eating nothing but green curry, overtraining, late nights watching the rugby (not soccer, which would definitely have caused it all by itself), some old jungle juice, maybe the Chinese meal or the beer that accompanied it, but at one point in the late evening of last Monday, I came down with a blinding headache, of the like that I’ve never experienced before or want to again. I spent two days in bed and it took some more days afterwards to recover. The other, possibly more interesting explanation, which my wife subscribes to, is that when partaking in the aforementioned Chinese meal, she told me a story of a friend of hers, who was “possessed” for some hours and I asked if she grew red horns out of her head, apparently I shouldn’t have done this, and the evil spirit entered my body in order to give me a blinding fucking headache and teach me a lesson.

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I spent the week assaulting the local beaches. I saw corbina every day but only on Wednesday did they present themselves cheerfully, tailing, surfing, and cruising. I caught two and missed one eat. A good day. I also walked the beach with two congenial new beach buds. Richard is new to the beach, a new owner of an HT6 and was introduced to me by Paul. We walked Dockweiller without seeing much. He told me of a flat to the south there that had some finicky fish piled up. I’ll check it out during the next round of extreme tides. A second day on the same stretch was similarly unproductive. Fish showed, but only for a few minutes.

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We usually stay one week a bit north on the Swedish west coast each summer. So we did this year also, or almost a whole week. This week is spend swimming, fishing, eating ice cream. This time of the year is usually a good time for mackerel fishing. But I’ve seen the ocean change over the years. Less fish caught, less life in the ocean and more algae in the water.  This year it is a lot of algae in the ocean, though a bit less of it covering the seaweeds on the rocky shorelines. But a lot of it every where else.  Something has been different this year. The first evening by the ocean there were a decent amount of small herrings swimming around. The fish that has been gone the latest years. So absent that people fishing for them has quit or even went bankrupt. But now they were there. And this wasn’t in a good location. 

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That is most used sentence nowadays. Everything is rigged if things don't go on your way. Presidental election, football matches, hockey games.... It is rigged. This would be funny if it wouldn't be sad. Imagine adults can't stand lost in fair game.   Football world cup is coming to finale. It has been some amazing matches and performances on field. Some teams has truly done more than anybody could imagine. Capo Verde and their 41 yrs old goalie, wow, they believed themselves and didn't back up, they played 0-0 with Spain which in final now and gave some hard time to Argentina, losing during overtime match. Argentina is also in Final by the way.

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One for the purists this week! The rattle clouser. It's an ugly fly that, much like the ugly duckling, undergoes an amazing transformation and looks amazing when it's hanging from the jaws of a fish.

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The Scottish Game Fair was a highlight for me as it was only the second time I had won an open competition against mainly male entrants. The first time was at the last Welsh Game Fair a couple of years ago, however there was no trophy and we went straight into a final with the winners of all the Game Fairs (the Scottish, the English and the Welsh) so there wasn't much time to post anything about winning. In that final I came third behind James and Steve. This year I won the Scottish cup so my name will be engraved on it alongside a long list of good casters. Not bad for a busy weekend where I only had one entry into each of the 3 events that make up the championship.

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I was still down south in New Zealand. Ronan said the fishing was on, even in the cold. The forecast's main problem was ice over the high passes after snow. Black ice, freezing conditions, dangerous driving. The other problem was that I was down with my family, and I wanted time with them too. I can't be all about fishing. Off we set. The roads were okay and we took the pass carefully. Minus eight on the tops. The forecast said freezing fog, and we hoped that somewhere along the lake we'd drive out of it. We did. Brilliant blue sky, low wind, a classic cold South Island day.

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I have a couple of videos/podcasts to edit. One is a long and interesting discussion with Andy the Redneck, the immaculate Sexyloops rod builder in Texas. And the other is with Nick on the flycasting drills for lesson 2 on the Sexyloops courses. I’ve also been busy teaching this week, one of my long term students has his CI exam next weekend. So good luck! Rickard and I ran him through a preparation test yesterday.

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Beams and Columns are in the news - The Pfizer building in midtown Manhattan  was purchased by an enormous consortium of financial and real estate players. A historically large project is in progress to convert the office building into residences. Everywhere, on every construction project in NY, air rights are key. They intend to build upward on the existing structure. There’s a shit-ton of money involved but apparently not enough to do a proper survey, analysis and design and the original columns are buckling. There should also have been an independent review of the design. I’m not sure how this stuff happens. I suspect that it’s due to an underfunded public sector. You can’t blame the city for the greed of developers nor for all the see-through office space - they don’t seem to be able to get enough people to return to offices and sky-high housing prices are driving these conversions in NY and LA. But developers are the kings in big cities and there’s not much they do right - witness the Great American State Fair and the Reflecting Pool reno. And those shitty condos in Florida. I’m amazed they don’t all fall down. And now Trump is going after the columns in front of the White House, now tarped but I bet soon to be unveiled festooned with golden cherubs and other kitchy slop. 

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“Do you have an exciting FP, Rickard?”, that was the message I woke up to. At first my plan was to deny that I had forgotten and write something really fast in the hour and half I had before I was meeting Paul. Then I realised it is Friday so then I could relax. Not my problem today.

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Silage is done, it was busy busy week. Saturday it was rainy and I had some cutted hay. I moved ready bales and had rest. Sunday was full day still with silage. I came out as winner from that week. We basically have all the bales we need for next winter already.   So now I can turn my head for fishing, and other life also. Monday and Wednesday was heavy rain, which was basically day off and handling some running things which has been forgotten for weeks. Wednesday was funny as I put human clothes on and had town day... I felt like human again, it was uncomfortable.

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This week I thought I’d share another sand eel, or sand lance, pattern. There are plenty of them around, some of them a lot more complicated than they need to be.

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Tracy and I are both recovering from a very busy weekend at the Scottish Game Fair. Tracy chose to recover by going back to work in Scotland, whereas I managed to cadge a lift back to Wales from Chris so we could go fishing on the Elwy and the Dee. Before I start rambling I should begin with a huge 'thank you' to the team that helped us with the competitions at the weekend; Chris, Stewart and Jill gave up their weekend to work as volunteers. A new group were organising the fishing area this year and there were some 'hand over' issues between the old team and the new, this meant that the call for additional volunteers to help with the fly casting comps was overlooked, hence the BFCC crew had to work all three days without a break. It was tough!

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In the South Island many rivers close for winter. Some of the big ones stay open all year. They're not the famous rivers. Often they're quite modified for power generation and water use, carrying the high rainfall of the southern mountains down to the coast. They hold very good trout numbers, and winter spawning movements put fish where you can find them. A friend of mine does search and rescue on the lakes and winter rivers. His stories all start with someone who was sure they'd be fine. The big river was running at 450 cumecs, 200 cumecs higher than last year, slightly murky, which for fishing is often ideal. The river deserved respect, so Ronan Creane and I picked our water carefully and kept the wading conservative. The flow shut off access to some stretches, but that's winter. Snow was forecast. We got rain instead, at 2 to 3 degrees, so off we went.

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It’s been a great weekend for me. I grew up playing rugby which means I’ll always love the game. That’s how that works. Fantastic match between NZ and France. South Africa are just a machine. So skilled and hard up front. And I enjoyed watching Fiji. Great to see the Australians look better. Not sure what England’s direction is. Ultimately, what it shows, I think, is that that you need depth. And, in the case of England, a complete reset. England has depth, flair and invention, but they don’t currently play that way.

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I’ve been back in LA since the wee hours Monday. I spent time Friday morning at the park - as the fourth approached - “where is everybody?” On holiday apparently.  I took my recently repaired (don’t ask) HT8 out for a drive stringing it up with my WF5F SA Trout. I went to explore power application by experimenting with the maximum end of the scale.

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Last week I shared my thoughts about strength and a bit of mobility and flexibility. That can seem a bit daunting. So I will share some ideas about something less daunting.

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First sunset in two weeks has come, not that you would notice it without looking calender. This week turned insane as weather changed. No rain really after last Saturday.   So it has been silage making. And reindeer marking. Well it was rain on Saturday afternoon and then forecast said nice weather until Monday evening. So after rain I cut down two fields and Sunday morning one more as it looked dry and nice until Tuesday morning.

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I thought I’d look at an older pattern this week, one that might be less commonly known nowadays, the Copper Liz.

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Tracy and I are up in Scotland right now, Tracy is working and I'm just hanging about, thinking about doing some casting practice but not getting round to it. Actually I can still feel a hint of tennis elbow so I'm reluctant to go out and cause further injury with a 15ft Spey rod. I don't know why it is, but I always think I should practice Spey casting whilst in Scotland, rather than anything single handed. Where we are staying is on the banks of a sea loch, so there are numerous calm, shallow bays where I could wade out and cast. A week or so back I was at Bala lake in North Wales practising with Steve – he pointed out a couple of issues that I need to work on with regards to my single Spey cast, so I know what I'm going to work on when I do get out.

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