In April I had the pleasure of fishing River Dee in Scotland. Something I have always wished to do and which turned out to be all in all a wonderful experience. I’ve had some unfortunate experiences in the past travelling with groups of people I didn’t know and I had sworn never to do that again. Howeveer, this team was put together by a very good friend of mine and I had no doubts that he had a good team. And indeed he did. We had a cabin to our selves, shared cooking, dishes and breakfast evenly and naturally. Apart from that, apart from fishing the famed and hallowed River Dee I fished with a proper and professional ghillie for the first time.
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We came out from mountains late Friday. Our flight was delayed because bad flying weather. So I had few extra hours fishing in the mountains. Afternoon I went to have sleep as it looked that flight might not come at all, so I wanted to be fresh for evening/night fishing. I was in full sleep when copter came.
I jumped up pack my stuff and off we go. In Friday evening we had nice private stretch to fish but as we were late there othee crew went to sleep after short session and I kept fishing until 2 am. I caught some nice graylings, 47-49 cm, but no trout.
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Yet another week of traditional October Scottish weather in August is keeping me pretty much off the water. I did have a wee foray to a local loch, but could only fish a couple of sheltered bays, and certainly couldn't have gone out on the boat or tube as I'd have been blown about like a crisp packet. I'm hoping for a couple of days the following week though, but we'll see.
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This week we have been busy with family and friends but have managed to get some time to go casting. We had hoped to go fishing but the strong gusty winds put us off from going to the river. Hopefully we'll get time to go fishing tomorrow evening on our way home from a work trip, the waders and our gear are currently packed in the hire car ready. The casting sessions have been going well for us as we both had pbs with the ST27 outfit on consecutive days, with mine getting very close to 50m and James getting close to 60m. We are both trying to improve our delivery casts by focusing on straight tracking and launching up and it does seem to be working. As it has been very windy lately we have been practising with the ST27, T38 and S55g outfits. There's not much point practising technique with a #5 when the wind is constantly changing direction whilst you cast, causing shearing of the line on long carries, resulting in a poor shoot and layout.
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Well firstly, it’s probably been one of the most stressful weeks of my life, without actually doing anything. I’ve been coaching a couple of athletes at the World Championships and let me tell you, it’s far more stressful coaching a competitor than it is being a competitor. It was unreal.
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“It’s an incredible thing to go out every single day and know that you’ve gotta figure them (Bass) out. This amazing study of natural rhythms and how all things are connected — I can’t see myself ever getting tired of that.”
---Rick Clunn
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There’s something about the empty chair at the dinner table, the constant reminder that now tinges every gathering and meal with a clingy dusting of melancholy, every silent lull in conversation seems to nudge you to a sad reminder of who’s missing, now lost, gone. That cold shadowy void upon the empty seat, which would once have offered a warm voice and a friendly completing presence, hangs now heavy in silence. The weight of the loss, the lack of balance that now tilts the room and puts everyone in it, slightly out of kilter.
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On Monday TV crew came to Ammarnäs. I fished Monday with Satu and Gunnar. Gunnar took us new spot which was really nice. We caught few grayling and we saw three Ammanäs trout. It was relaxing day for me after long guiding day on Sunday.
As you might know every TV program has sponsors. And I got sponsor's long johns.. long underpants or what ever. Those was blue and extreme version, which mean they are thick and made for extreme cold. Made from merino wool, and I use these devolt brand when I need long ones.
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I’ve been writing these FPs for over 20 years and for a long time, I had Tuesday as my regular day. Then for some reason I took over Saturdays. I can’t remember why or even when, but it was years ago. 20 years in and I still manage to forget sometimes. In fact, so often that Paul always sends me a reminder, usually on Fridays. For a while now I’ve actually been ahead and had 2 or 3 pages uploaded. Which of course is nice but also an absolute guarantee that I’ll forget it when there are no more on the server.
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It's rained and blown a gale basically every day but one since I've been back in Scotland which along with the circumstances of me being home have prevented any fishing. Everyone keeps saying they've not really had a summer, which I'm starting to believe. Things are looking brighter over the weekend, and I might get out, but I'm not holding out much hope of getting clear water and nice fishing. I did buy a couple of paper magazines rather than online subs the other day which has kept my marginally satisfied but also annoyed me a bit.
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Last weekend we held the BFCC fly casting event in Derbyshire, very close to the pretty town of Bakewell. The day before the casting event, we had planned to go fishing on the river Wye, however as I wasn't very well in the morning we decided to go for a leisurely stroll around Bakewell instead. Obviously this meant mainly walking along the river bank to check out the fish. There are also several bridges where people stand and throw food into the river for the ducks and the humongous fish. We were amazed by the size of the trout – both browns and rainbows – but what got our attention was the size of the grayling and the fact that they rose to take food near the surface. It was intriguing to watch the fish behaviour taking this unnatural food, however we also saw lots of flies and rises to naturals. Bakewell has an amazing array of shops and places to get coffee and cakes – so of course we did sample some sugary desserts with a cuppa.
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There is obviously a quite significant separation between initially learning to roll cast and how to train it, and the second part of today’s video for those of Intermediate Level.
I had plans to reshoot it and make it into two videos but I’m flat out at the moment with the Ironman in seven and a half weeks and learning to swim with Snakehead again.
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A few weeks ago, I wrote a Front Page detailing a new (old) vehicle that I purchased from an old family friend. One of the things that I was most excited about, was the fact that this old truck had a "camper" on the bed....in some places called a "topper". Although my dad owned a truck back in the 1970s with a camper on it, this will be the first vehicle I have owned that will allow the bed of the truck to be used for all weather camping.
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The rest of that winter was kind for habitat work, clearing the debris from the Tornado, and we slotted into a routine of clearing the branches and the accompanying tons of twigs, leaves and tangles and strangles of Ivy; wild Roses; and Woody Nightshade. The fishing club members rallied not so much in droves but a constant flow of drips and drabs, which is the way I like it, little and often, a constant turning of the wheel.
I concentrated on the areas of the potential Redds first, with the exception of that ‘Heart of the Brook’ spawning ground I’d previously put so much of my efforts into. That was to sit on the backburner for now. There was so much fallen, weighing down on that particular area, burying the Brooks waters deep under 8 feet or more of crushed debris spreading for 50 or 60 feet of stream bed. It was hard to discern what was under all that tangle of branches and foliage and gauge the scale of the task in hand.
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Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, they say. More than that beauty can be defined in many ways, which in this case speaks to my advantage. I’ve spent hundreds of hours fishing through the night and I really still enjoy it, but the reality of family, work and other interests just means that I rarely do it any more. I used to be able to come home after sunrise, catch a few hours of sleep and remain functioning the rest of the day. Not so any more, so it’s rare these days, although it happens. That’s one of the reasons I always look forward to August. First of all the sea trout are fully on the run up river and night falls early. That means that I can still get a good few hours of fishing into the darkness, come home and not be completely dysfunctional the following day (I was never good at sleeping in).
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This week has been quite busy with guiding. Monday group at river, Tuesday farm day, Wednesday lake day and now Thursday and Friday one group at river.
I'm writing this by the river on Thursday. Some of guests are still fishing and others having beer or two. We have 1,5km hike back to car and it just uphill. Fishing seems to difficult, still high water and not really active fish around. Everyone has caught something but bigger ones are hiding.
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Well, because of some unfortunate circumstances, this week I've found myself in Scotland instead of getting ready to go to Okinawa. Luckily I had a box full of flies and plenty of gear for pike that I could throw in my case for the odd foray that I can squeeze in.
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This weekend we have our annual trip to Derbyshire for a fishing trip on the river Wye and a day casting with the BFCC at Ashford-in-the-Water near Bakewell. This weekend is always great fun as several of us stay overnight which means we can have a social evening, or two. Particularly helpful when we stay within walking distance of the local pubs.
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The HT9 prototype took a long and arduous journey to get here. First it went to Germany. I like Germany but why the HT9 went there first no one knows. Not even DHL who took it there. Back to the UK it was then shipped for a second time. This time it reached Malaysia but sat in customs for a month and then in Gerik for another two weeks, until Sunday, when it landed with me. I also have Sean’s HT8 and a telescope. Why do I have Sean’s HT8 you might ask? The Hot Orange whippings which he didn’t order, but Lee thought he had, just didn’t really appeal to Sean. He’s like that.
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Yesterday afternoon, my family and I decided to take a quick trip down to Port O'Connor. There's a pretty good little café we like to eat at, and although a 5 hour round trip may seem excessive, I needed to get away from the epoxy business for a little while. A little over halfway to POC is the ton of Goliad, which is famous for a number of things, but in my mind will always be the place where we dumped those HORRIBLE rancid crab. I hadn't thought about that trip in a while, but as we passed that convenience store, I swear I could still smell the stench. The seafood was great, and we did a bit of sightseeing, but unfortunately we didn't have time to do any fishing. Hope you enjoy this one Paul (again)....I know it's one of your favorites!
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That Sunday morning when the wind was up, carrying some drops of rain occasionally onto the window pane. The weekend after I’d finally finished the Redds and had tried to put right those many wrongs of the digger, on what I considered the best spawning ground, although the Trout may beg to differ. That day that promised to go one way or the other, either complete deluge or turn out fine, and I’d decided to wait it out as a domestic goddess, had topped up the coffee grinder, turned up the eclectic Sunday morning mix on radio 6, ready to be Mrs Mop for the morning. Just try not to conjure up the image of Freddie Mercury singing “I want to break free” in drag, and this will be more bearable for both of us.
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I’m beginning to enjoy more and more the classic wet fly fishing techniques again. They were my experiences in fly fishing and it was how I first enjoyed some success. When I was a kid I knew the two small streams I fished well. I fished small Mepps spinners on a cheap glass rod from a local supermarket. Solid glass, that is. It couldn’t break. I was quite envious with my friend, because his rod was longer.
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July was slow and stressfully. There was only few guiding days and problems with making silage. Eventually we got silage done and now hoping that second would be better quality. This week has been doing that and that.
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Summer lightning storms kept me off the water this week, but it's a bit cooler at least and I've not been outside in temperatures over 40 degrees which is nice. I have been tying some more hair bugs for bass and started putting together a series of videos on tying them.
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The Game Fair casting competitions were a bit of a mixed bag for me personally, with some highs and some really poor lows. Going into the weekend I knew I wasn't at my best distance casting wise, but I had been doing alright when practising accuracy. That said, I was also aware that it's easy to fool yourself into thinking you're scoring great when casting at small targets (I use little plastic cones as targets), but when faced with the comparatively large World Championship specification target it's easy for precision to suffer. I'm not sure why this is, but with a small target my misses tend to be smaller than with a big bulls-eye. With a percentage scoring system in place, I knew that the accuracy event offered the best chance of beating the competition by over 10% which should have given me enough to make up for my trout distance perhaps not being at its best.
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The new revamped Sexyloops website is looking great. It should be ready in a couple of weeks I think. We are getting some traction with our rod manufacturing again and expect to have caught up with all of our current orders in the next few weeks. If you order a Hot Tortuga today it will take about 5 weeks to deliver. I’m trying to speed that up and later this year actually have rods in stock, ready to ship at a moment’s notice.
Some of our orders this year have taken a very long time, and for that I apologise. For anyone who has waited a significant amount of time I’ll be giving two Zoom casting meets by way of thanks for your patience!! There has been a few delays. Looking down the line I’m hoping to have a part time builder in Australia later this year and we may also have a builder in the USA next year, which is something we are discussing.
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After I finished las week's Front Page about nostalgia, I spent a little time out in the man-cave thumbing through the 30 year old magazines I referenced in the essay. It dawned on me that one of the recurring manufacturing themes over the last 30 years is the concept of weight reduction.
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Sunday morning and the wind was up, carrying some drops of rain occasionally onto the window pane, the day promised to go one way or the other, complete deluge or turn out fine. The ambiguous BBC weather forecast didn’t help to plan a day ahead. They might as well have predicted an intermittent covering of low uncertainty with the wind increasing or decreasing while swirling into every possible direction that you choose to face, with much more of everything returning as the afternoon progressed into the evening for an unsettled night a head. They hadn’t got a clue.
And being English I feel duty bound to mention this weather in the very first paragraph. Crucial as it is to my tale.
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Vegen Special is a simple, soft hackle wet fly and I suppose, nothing special as such. It is a fly I like to fish and as all soft hackles, it’s very versatile and fishes very well in both running- and still water and can imitate anything and in different sizes works under most circumstances. It’s often one of the flies I tie on, when I’m in doubt what’s going on under the surface. I often fish it on a dropper - sometimes even with a Vegen Special on the point as well, but one noticeably smaller than the other. It’s named after a small tributary to one of Denmark’s larger salmon rivers.
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Let's be honest. Friday we had barbeque evening and it is totally possible that last gintonic was spoiled, like Seine river in Paris now. That is the only possible conclusion because I had kind of hangover on Saturday. There is no way that I had too many beers during the evening.
Anyway Sunday was also slow motion down day when we still had heatwave going. There was thunder and rain on Saturday but it didn't really cool the air. Sunday evening we tested our belly boats, as we need them in Sweden when going there. Mine had leaking pontoon so I couldn't use that, and it was not fixeable so I had to order new pontoon. Satu's was otherwise okay but her flippers need some fixing.
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I fished alone this week, first time in a while actually what with the tube outings and helping Chuck with sight fishing and Okinawa flats prep. I had been planning to go and climb a mountain but when I opened the door a 4 am it was already boiling, so I shut it and went back to bed for a couple more hours.
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