Last weekend there was reindeer race in Kuusamo. Two days, fast reindeers, good company and lot of sunshine. Satu was working most of the time as volunteer and I was watching race. Friday we had TV -shooting, that was was about reindeer and cooking as normally in winter it is.
We have now one racing reindeer, it has passed qualifying, time has to be under 1.24.999 in one kilometre (0.62 mi). Our reindeer is still young so it wasn't taking part on race yet. Starts are with 6 reindeer at same time and it could be too much for young. On coming Saturday they have local race and there reindeer go one by one against the time... so ours will take part, I hope. In the end it us about trainer's decision.
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It's been terrible weather the last week or so, which has been good for me as I feel less bad just sitting at home tying my new box of nymphs.
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A day-long trip to Missoula on Saturday included stops at two fly shops to test-drive fly rods. I was looking for an Echo Trout X. The first shop only had Douglas and Orvis, which I’ve already tried. The guy working the counter sent us to another shop he thought might carry Echo and Loomis.
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This week part two of my conversation with Bernt Johansson. Part 2 is even better than part 1, I think, and so I hope you enjoy it.
I’m certainly really rather busy with my online flycasting coaching at the moment. I’m actually in danger of this becoming a full time occupation. Which is going to be an interesting decision and is certainly keeping me on my toes right now. A real highlight for me last week, was Willy the “Finfluencer”, :) who I hadn’t seen for almost four weeks, who came back seriously improved. Twenty hours of training since the previous coaching session! It certainly showed and it’s things like that that really make me happy.
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Another multi-purpose pattern from the files of John "Bubba" Tebbetts
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The first BFCC event of 2023 has been quite eventful! Several records have been broken, Bart had the overall win, coming first in 6 of the seven disciplines, and lots of casters had a great day getting fantastic instruction from Mike and Mark. We had some strong winds, but lots of heavy showers and the wind was often turbulent causing several of the casters to have problems with side winds.
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Insignificant might be too strong a term, because in essence, I enjoy every fish I catch. But the small ones I think we’d all rather be without - not least for the sake of the fish. Every now and then it happens that even catching a small fish can save the day. A friend and I were fishing a small stream - one that I occasionally persuaded my dad to take me to when I was a kid.
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It is last busy week of the season. Next week it is slowing down totally. We just got one ice fishing event booking which is nice to have on April. Before that event we go to Inari for one week, watch reindeer race finals. After racing weekend some ice fishing in Inari lake. We will have our fly fishing rods with us, so some training also.
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The fishing has continued to be good this week with plenty of rain in the mountains bringing more maruta into the rivers and more rain forecast. Unfortunately, yesterday's fishing also included the loss of my nymph box.
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A very generous friend sent me three used fly lines, including a 6 wt. Lumiline (I’ve wanted an intermediate line for quite some time and heard this was a good one), a 7 wt. MED (remember mine was eaten by a vicious vacuum cleaner?), and a well-used 8# bone fish line. I am very grateful for this generosity. I’ll use the bone fish line for the experiment where you take an old 8 wt. line, cut it down to 40’, and then add a length of 30# mono as the “running line.” It will serve as a tool to help me get the feel of a high-and-hot pickup backcast, and the feel of casting with an overhang. Another friend gave me the idea for this experiment and will give me tips as I work on it.
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I had a long and enjoyable chat with Bernt last week. Another one of these “one hour” conversations, that took two and a half hours. I’ve edited it down to two one-hour sessions. I’ve started to find conversations like this interesting when driving, indoor bike riding, cooking beans and potatoes.
Bernt and I talked about flycasting competition casting, the World Championships and, or course, fly fishing! I found Bernd’s casting-sport training methods fascinating. Particularly I was interested in his experience with indoor 5WT distance casting, both his longest cast as well as how he trains for consistency. Lots of interesting details in these two hours and plenty to think about.
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March is ALWAYS a sketchy time of year to try and plan a fishing trip in Texas. Technically it's spring, but some days it feels just like winter, and other days it feels like the dog days of summer. Jackson and I decided to make a flying run down to Port Lavaca during the last couple of days of his spring break vacation to try and catch a few Redfish. Unfortunately for us, the weather gods had something else in mind.
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A couple of weeks back I wrote about testing some prototype ‘distance’ fly lines that are currently under development by Steve Parkes at his premises set in a beautiful area on the edge of Snowdonia here in North Wales. Steve has part procured and part manufactured all the equipment he needs to produce fly lines. From speaking to him he’s having a lot of fun running off different tapers and going out and casting them as soon as they’ve cooled down from the curing process. The fact that Steve is also a very accomplished caster, he’s won many an event at the BFCC, suggests to me that eventually he will produce something very good indeed.
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I have an interesting rod to review at the weekend, and it has been given to me to try, it is the new Sage R8 Core in a 9’ #6 configuration (including a fighting butt), so if we label it properly, it is a 691-4. Having had a quick go with it in the garden before it got dark, I was pleasantly surprised as it is a lot softer than Sages usual sticks. It sports a low swing weight with hardly any tip bounce, which is a very good thing! Anyway, I won’t say anymore about it, there is more to come, possibly a video!
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Weekend it was warmer again. That means that instead -20 celsius (-4 Fahrenheit), it was -10 celsius (14 Fahrenheit). Saturday I was still busy with guests at farm. Sunday I had planned day off, only Satu need some help with background work in the morning. And afternoon we had planned husky sleigh ride with our winter team.
So after helping Satu, I decided to do some casting training. I realized from very beginning that it will be cold training. It was sunshine, what I didn't realize earlier was that there was cold breeze. So basically it felt more like -18 C(0F).
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Well I got the rain I'd been hoping for, and even though it put paid to an amago fishing trip, I was happy. It meant the maruta would be really starting to run.
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There are toxic people everywhere, and I’ve met them in fly fishing, but today I interacted with the worst I’ve ever met. Many women would refer to it as “toxic masculinity.” The experience was pretty negative, but it reminded me of mistakes to avoid as instructors.
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I’m editing a Zoom conversation I had with Bernt Johansson but I’m also proof-reading my wife’s final MBA paper. That should be finished tonight. Yay! So in the meantime, I’m linking a video I uploaded over the weekend on Roll Casting Drills, which is also how I introduce both Stopless and Pull-back on my Zoom courses.
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"Spring training is the preseason in Major League Baseball (MLB), a series of practices and exhibition games preceding the start of the regular season. Spring training allows new players to try out for roster and position spots, and gives established players practice time prior to competitive play."
---Wikipedia
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I can’t believe it half way through March and I haven’t yet been fishing on the Dee this year. The weather over the last few months has either been particularly wet, windy or both and lately we’ve had snow. So instead we’ve been casting when we can, sometimes testing new lines and generally preparing for this year’s competitions. The first is only in two weeks in Cheshire and it should be a good comp as King Bart is coming over for it, as is Steve. The weekend following this is the UK Championships in Cumbria. I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the UK team and catching up around the casting events.
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I was given an excellent prototype line to test this week, and I will be giving it a go this weekend. So what is it? Well, it’s a long headed #5 line that I think will fly to the horizon, how do I know this? Well, as soon as I came back from work, I loaded it onto a reel and tested it in the garden. One of the first things to do was to get out the accuracy rings from the shed, so I spent about an hour throwing at targets. It had a very nice taper that unrolled beautifully, and didn’t crumple or collapse when using minimum force to produce dolphin nosed loops.
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I asked AI to write FP in Mika Lappalainen style. I used keywords: flycasting, is dark side stronger than light, lumiline, casting in darkness. After few request it did something which was close to what I had in my mind, quite similar what I do. It was missing spelling and grammatical mistakes, so I decided to do it myself.
I have done some casting training. It has been -10 celsius, that has been okay. During the weekend and begin of this week it has been -20 celsius and I haven't trained. It is too cold to lumiline which allready got some damage because of cold. Friday I had set up ready and between groups I did few short sessions.
I charged lumiline with uv-lamp and tried to take photos and videos about casting. My phone's camera is just not good enough to do that. Anyway I did practise, before that I had some feedback from Paul about previous sessions. What I really appreciate is the tips and advice what were given.
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I'm waiting for rain. We had some last weekend, but not enough. Luckily we've got some forecast so I'm hoping it gets the rivers running a bit higher to really get the maruta in the system in numbers.
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I took a couple days off from practicing due to frustration rather than trying to push through it. With some distance from practice, some contemplation about previous instruction both good and not-as-good, and reviewing some videos, I was able to resume practice today with a better understanding of what I’d been doing wrong. My new understanding came from Paul, SL members and an OnForm video where one MCI candidate critiqued another: On the pickup, follow the angle made when lifting the line from the water. That angle will change with the length of line being cast but is preserved during the acceleration phase and final rotation. It’s a straight line. I had to mull that over because it’s not what I was originally taught, or at least how I understood it. That original instruction was to lift the rod tip to a certain height and then pull relatively straight back, horizontally. The result is that I had two separate angles: Lifting was one angle and translation was another. No wonder I was getting loops with diverging, instead of parallel, legs! Things finally started to make sense and today I was consistently getting better results on the initial pickup. It’s a clear example of overcoming an anchoring bias.
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This week I’m posting an interesting, practical and often entertaining game, that I learned from Peter Hayes in Tasmania. The game is to start with a length of flyline outside the rod tip that is the same length as the rod (usually 9’). Then three subsequent PUALD casts are made. In training you are trying to make your longest third cast.
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Wednesday, March the 8th marks the one year anniversary of the passing of my good friend, John B. Tebbetts. What better way to celebrate this accomplished angler than to take a look at another one of his creations, The Grizzly & White Tarpon fly.
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Everyone who has competed in #5 weight fly casting distance events will have heard of the Scientific Anglers Mastery Expert Distance (SA MED) line. This is a true to AFFTA weight specification line with a very long head, 72 feet, that demands a carry in the order of ~85 feet in order to get the best of it. Actually it’s a great fishing line too, in fact I started using the MED (it was called the XXD back then) before I got involved in casting sport – I’m pretty sure I caught my first ever bonefish, from near the Boca Paila bridge in Mexico, with it and I continued to use it for a number of subsequent trips despite it not being a ‘tropics’ line. When I did get involved in distance casting it was great that I didn’t have to adapt to a new line and I distinctly remember my first ever competition, at the Sportfish premises near Reading in southern England, where I cast my bonefish outfit 39 yards which I was quite pleased with at the time (only being beaten by the likes of John Reynolds, Jonathon Tomlinson and Mike Heritage).
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I’ve uploaded the second part of my talk with Nick on Distance Casting. We also discuss training, balloons and lumi-lines!
Today is my big ride of the week. This evening I sit on my indoor bike for four and a half hours. This is actually my favourite ride of the week; I look forward to it all week and it sets me up for a great start next week. I have my weekly long run on either Monday or Tuesday night.
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Now I have to say that I'm not really sure about title. In Finnish it is ryhtiliike and google translation made it like that. It is little bit similar as put yourself together, like do something to get something done. I'm not really sure if you understand what I mean.
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It's been a good week of fishing here. Along with the usual local carp, I went out for seabass on Monday with Canadian John and then on Tuesday hit another river in search of maruta (pacific redfin).
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Ashly and I shot down to KL for her sister’s wedding. One would have thought that travelling through the night in both directions would have been a relatively pain-free experience. However not to be and there were night time roadworks causing me to sit in stop-go motorway traffic for 90 minutes at 2.30am on a Tuesday morning in the middle of nowhere FFS. Anyway the result of this was around 2hrs sleep in KL, a quick couple of hours after the wedding and finally getting home again this morning at 5am. That’s right - the Roll Casting exercise video is not ready!
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