Daily Cast Archive

So this is my 100th FP. Didn’t think I would have so much to say when Paul asked me if I could write some FPs back then. So what could be more fitting than attribute this FP to the thing that I would say started it. I have told this story before but new parts of the story has emerged. So to the HT7, the origo of my fly casting career!

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After nice fishing trip in Sweden, it is back to reality. Last week couple from France came as volunteer to farm. They live in their camper van and help us in some work. They are super helpful as both of them are quite handy. They have been doing things at farm when I have been "working outside".   Working outside in this context means that I have been away from farm. We are renewing round up fence for reindeer work few kilometres from here. In that fence we will separate meat reindeer from breeding ones etc. In May we unbuilt old one and three weeks ago we started to built new.

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Following on from last week's simple bonefish offering, I thought I'd go with another that while a bit more involved, is still a doddle to put together.

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It’s emotionally distressing to perform below average, or to be unsuccessful at an activity. (It Sucks to Suck) My wife recently bought me some stickers for my fly fishing travel case. I am a sucker for a good sticker, and she does well to find ones that are right up my alley. One in particular stood out among the rest. The sticker was of a sucker fish, and the caption read, “it sucks to suck.” Man, I love that phrase. I love it so much, because not sucking has driven me to work hard at many different things throughout my life. I also think I love it, because people that don’t put out an effort to be above average at something deserve to not be above average at something. We should change it to it sucks to suck, but it's your fault so quit crying about it. The second-place sticker she bought was of a rainbow trout, and the caption was, “if you litter, you are a bitch.” Close second, very close…

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My sister sent me a photo on Saturday. "Dam spilling." No fishing in it at all. A gravel path, a white fence, a wall of spray coming off a hydro dam, and a sky that looked like it had more to give. I do this thing where I look at a photo of water the way I look at an x-ray at work. It's a habit. There is always something else in it if you look long enough. So I looked, and then I looked up the numbers. 900 cumecs through the dam. 1000 cumecs down at the bottom of the river where it meets the sea. 420 coming out of the lake at the top. The lakes must be high and the westerly rain keeps arriving. Southland has just recorded its wettest winter in 46 years, 62% above average, and this catchment sits right in the path of it. The country is apparently drier than it used to be. For the westerly catchments it's a different story.

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Last week I trained about 15 hrs of which 15 minutes was devoted to swimming. Yep, we won’t talk too much about the swimming! But if I actually manage to swim this week, as intended, then I’ll get close to 20hrs training this week. It’s not professional triathlete standard but it’s significant. I’d better have a good IM this year!! Also I had 15 flycasting lessons, which is what I try to average weekly (no more!). That’s plenty. Great fun they are too! I had a couple of standout moments last week. The 170 has been huge for Dale and he looks like a really connected caster now. Speys has transformed Jansen. Both aspects I want to talk about later in this FP.

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The river was alive last week. I fished the bowling alley. There was enough going on to keep me entertained all morning. The sky was overcast so viz was not great but fish were pushing, rolling, and tailing within reach often enough. I got two explosive eats casting into pockets on the far shore - good fish breaking me off immediately. And there were some aggressive youngsters and small but chunky bass - all very chewy.  The water was warm and the SA bonefish WF6F worked nicely. Fished 18’ leader tapered to 3x - apparently too light. 

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In the latest issue of The Loop from Fly Fishers International there is an article about strength training for fly casting. The issue I’m referring to is the issue Summer 2026. I found the article interesting and a lot of useful information. Especially the parts about what muscles that are involved in the casting and also their role in the cast. One thing the article tells us is that the rotator cuff does very little work when we are casting, with sound technique. These muscles are not force generators, their job could be described as a suction cup that keeps the humerus in its socket. There could still be some need to train in such a way that the rotator cuff gets some work and have found an interesting exercise that should take care of that and then some that could be of interest for the fly caster. I’ll come back to that one later in the FP.

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Friday morning, wake up, have brekafast, prepare picnic lunch and partly dinner. Now I don't have to worry about cooking after fishing day so much. Camping place owner came to say that one cabin is free from now as people signed out earlier. She basically insists that I move there.   So I would have cabin for two nights, sounds good as Saturday evening we would have heavy rain. After preparation we took off with Gunnar. We are planning to fish Tjulån and he will show some new spots to me. We start with sight fishing, we spotted nice grayling and it was rising also. We don't have success. There is heavy wind and it is easily killing everything.

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Last week's fly inspired me to do a few more simple bonefish and flats patterns. So I'll be doing a little run of flies on the theme, all of them will be easy ties but they'll also be fish catchers. This week I'm going with the Turd.

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Tracy and I have just arrived home after a long weekend in Jersey, where the BFCC held a casting day on Saturday. The weather was as good as could be expected for mid-September – predominantly sunny with a temperature of 20 or 21 degrees C, with just the odd, short rain shower. We arrived on Friday morning and had some time to kill before we got access to our AirBnB, so we did a bit of a tour of the north of the island, always on the look out for anglers. We ended up in the cafe at St. Catherine's breakwater for a much needed coffee having had to get up at 2am in order to get to the airport for our early flight.

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There are coffee rings on the tying bench. Two of them, overlapping, which tells you the mug went down twice in the same place and nobody wiped it. That is the state of things. Work has gone up a level this year and the fishing has gone down one, and the only thing I can do about that at eleven at night is tie for it. So I have been tying smelt.

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A very interesting page from Rickard on Saturday about post competition blues. So I had a bit of a chat to the other athletes I work with. One is also in a small state of blues, despite winning a large number of medals and the other is in a post competition event halo… which is what I would choose!! I did a bit of research and a similar thing can be found with Olympic athletes too. So they are all in very good company!

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Southern storms drove big swells up the SoCal coast. They washed away a lot of sand on the West facing beaches. Waves broke over the jetties and big rogues did some damage. There was some impressive erosion. And worse, the latest heat wave drove me off the river - so hot and humid here - very rare. We’ve had weeks of 90 degree plus heat, some warm rain, and no relief overnight. It never cools down. It’s awful. Was 103 degrees (40 C)  last week.  So it’s been park practice on the grass or nothing. I practiced in the morning at first light and still worked up a sweat. My recent emphasis on extending carry and tuning hauling movements seems to be bearing fruit. I have Walter Mitty-ish day-dreams of joining Gould, Rajeff etal. on the competitive circuit as a 76 year old rookie and being carried off on the Team’s shoulders in triumph (BTW congrats to all). I might get there in another 5 or 6 years, maybe 10. I’ll shoot for that. So I practice mindfully. I hope I can still afford the entrance fees. 

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And burnout.  The time after a competition can be very empty. You might not really know what to do. No goals. At least not in the foreseeable future. You don’t know what to do, no plans. Should you go out and practice? Take time off? Work on something else? On top of that you can have a burnt out nervous system and dopamine system. Everything feels strange. Then you have the reflections from the competition. What did you do well? What could you have done better?

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It is Thursday evening when I write this. Normally I do it on Friday morning when having coffee. Night before I will finish the idea and on Friday it is an easy write. This week I had to do differently. Friday morning there is no time to sit down and write FP. The river is calling for sure.   Last weekend I had last guiding for this season, I think. Guest from Argentina, weather +6 celsius, north wind and on Saturday some heavy rain also. Not really weather for good fishing, still on Saturday we had great fishing with dry flies, not really big fish, yet few decent, and not really small ones at all. I was perfect day despite weather. Sunday was more difficult yet fish were bigger even he lost all the good ones. Overall good weekend.

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This week's pattern is a wonderful exercise in simplicity, that could teach a lot of people a few things about what flies really need. It's Lefty's craft fur shrimp.

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Down on the Willow brook it’s been a challenging summer for both fish and fishermen. Firstly someone upstream appeared to be messing about with the levels , we were plummeting on the gauge to very low flows and then sudden spiked recoveries. As the heat of late spring grew, this became more concerning. We are not a freestone river at the mercy of the mountains, but a long slowly gathering midland channel  with three sources at least, which then flows through a few stately homes that dam the brook for ornamental lakes and have sluices that can regulate the flow. Therefore levels for us don’t change dramatically.

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Some kayaking friends told me last week that dolphins had been swimming in and out of their group, ducking, diving and jumping. Birds were hitting the water and fish were jumping, work-up style. Auckland has spent years putting a large sewerage pipe under the city. Not a pretty topic, but the water is cleaner already and the life in the harbour has responded. That was enough to get me out, even though not all the stars were aligned for harbour fishing. The temp of the water is 14.4 degrees C, still a little cool for the migratory species that are some excellent sport on a fly rod.

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I’m writing this FP while on the indoor bike. A gentle 90 minutes. Last week was intense. 15 hrs. This week I plan 20 hrs or thereabouts. I’m definitely getting there. Swimming is coming together. Bike is strong. Running is good. I’m looking forward to the Ironman in 11 weeks. It’s been a good week for Tornado sales and I have some new students too. Now if the bloody fish that ate my fly this evening hadn’t swum around a stump and left my fly there, then life would be perfect!

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I took a lesson on Zoom with Paul on Friday. As usual it was grand! We worked on my carry. It needs longer (as they say in Pittsburgh). To get there other stuff needs fixed. What they are has led to an epiphany and since it arose from my teachers advice (I have it on film) it might endure.     Paul noticed that my haul needs to be better aligned with the rod at the stroke’s stopping point and should be smoother. Also pointing my elbow along that line as well to encourage efficient, natural straightening of the arm to maximum effect. It works but somehow I found something a little less efficient and repeatable to become my second nature. Too long between lessons. 

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The disciplines left to write about is seatrout distance and salmon distance. I had no real clue what equipment I would use for seatrout distance. I had brought two rods and some heads. I spent some time after the trout distance qualifiers to find what I liked the best. I ended up going what I initially thought. And found some improvements to be made in my back cast in the process. Still not good to reach a WCs final. Not much interesting to say there.

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I wake up on Friday morning, it would be time to write FP. I haven't got message from Paul, How it is going? That's how he reminds about FP. It is slow morning, I have to pick up guest from airport after 11 am. It is heavy rain and forecast is that it will rain whole weekend, tough fishing coming.   I lay in bed and I feel how small creatures are working in my muscles, like mining people or in server center. Rebuilding connections and muscles, overwriting muscle memory. I can even hear they chatting.... It will take time, yet work has begun.

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I was going to do a different fly this week, but then I just happened to tie a little brush fly for a bit of fun yesterday and I thought how nice and versatile they are. So that's what you're getting this week.

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I've written about 'carry' many times on the FP previously, but being as there's an active thread on the board about it, I thought I'd revisit the topic today. I think everyone would agree that increasing your carry is a sure fire way to increase your distance for competition casting, and to make your fishing casts more efficient and therefore easier.

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New Zealand is stuck in a weather pattern at the moment. Cooler, and windier than our usual conditions. Not much rain either, for a lot of the country. Once again snowing on the central North Island mountains adjacent to Lake Taupo. Given Taupo sits at 400m above sea level, it's cool. Mixing life with fishing is a challenge. I try to make my chances. My daughter had football at one of my favourite fishing spots, so I drove down early. Heavy winds, but on a big lake there is always a shore where the wind is behind you and the casting is easier. Taupō is New Zealand's biggest lake, and after three days of wind the waves on the beach were substantial by lake standards. I avoided those. But they gave me a thought, which I filed away to test later.

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