Well not quite, but almost. The Malaysian Ironman is a little over 4 weeks away (Nov 1st), so that has my attention. It’s been a pretty solid year of training since the last one. Almost every weekend a 4-5hrs indoor bike ride. And every week a long run of around 21km. Other days have been a mixture of shorter bike rides, weight training, shorter runs, my idea of yoga and some swimming. Total training hours has been 10 to slightly over 15 hrs almost every week. It’s not really about the Ironman; it’s about the training and the fitness it provides. But now, four weeks out, now it’s about the Ironman!!
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(The music for today’s article is Dance Monkey by Tones and I)
This weekend was the first big get together that FFI has done since the pandemic. My colleague Marty McVey was squared away to take my place for the MCI exam. He and I have been working with another gentleman that was going to be taking the CI exam while at the event. So, buddy testing, student testing, and a chance to cast with Bruce in the grass… I’ll be there. Paul will be happy to know that The FLAMING HOT CHEETO did go with me to the event. Bruce did get the opportunity to cast the rod for a while, and you never get much out of Bruce, but a smile and a little giggle means a lot.
“I could compete with this rod.”
-Bruce Richards
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I’ve been planning future fishing adventures while travelling - NOLA redfish, snakeheads with Paul, and a newly arisen opportunity to fish in Cuba. Also, I heard from Ben Crump, another student of Paul’s in LA. We fished the river a few times together months ago. He’s younger and sees fish better than I do. He’s a good fly tier. I've shared my “secret” river spots with him and he’s donated some of his well-tied files to me. I think he busily spent the summer preparing for his nuptials coming next year and we haven’t fished together since springtime but we will again when I get back to LA. Bill Varney, who writes and posts great YouTube surf fishing reports, says that most of the corbina have moved off the beaches and into bays and estuaries, so the surf sight-fishing game will likely be over by the time I get home so we’ll go find carp to feed in the river. That’s good too.
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This week not much casting or anything has been done. I’ve spent most of the week in bed since I have caught covid or something. Fever, tired and muscle aches. But last Saturday was better!
Last Saturday I drove down to Tyringe, a small town in southern Sweden to take part in a meeting we arranged for DPK, The Perfect Cast. I didn’t know what to expect for this meeting as it was the first one we arranged and only three persons had signed up. So I know it would be me and one more organiser and hopefully some more people.
When I arrived there were already more people there than had signed up. Accuracy targets was already setup and tape measurement with some distance markers was also setup. The sun was shining and it was warm like summer. That’s a good start of the day!
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I have been building extension to our reindeer paddock few weeks now. Extension will be about 700 meter, using 3 meter poles and two 120 cm net, to make fence 2 meter high. Poles has been placed for two weeks now and it is time to pull nets straight and tight.
Earlier I have done it by hands or I have had something loaned from other herders. Now their "machine" has died and it is so many nets that don't want to do it by hand. Well I could yet it would take ages.
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I thought I'd stick with the recent focus on flies this week by looking at another terrestrial insect that, while not a reliable hatch or fall, can still be a handy addition to the box; the yellow dung fly or coo dung flee as I know it.
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Our case finally turned up from the airport towards the latter end of last week; how they'd managed to 'lose' a 6 foot tube with 'Bazuka' written on the side of it, which had been especially checked in as oversize luggage, is beyond me. What made the situation worse was that the EasyJet logistics rep absolutely guaranteed that the case hadn't been loaded in Jersey as he'd spoken to the baggage handlers and they'd have remembered such a distinctive load coming on the aircraft. This turned out to be a complete lie, he hadn't checked at all – he probably popped outside for a few puffs of his vape and then came back in and made it all up. Many thanks to Laura (not that she'll be reading this – but maybe someone who knows her will be) who went to Jersey airport to try and find the rods. After being given the run around for a bit she eventually found out that the case was on the plane and must be in Liverpool somewhere, unfortunately at this time Tracy and I were back in Wales.
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The last three rod shipments sent to the US from Spain all had a 550-650 USD tariff applied. A couple of replacement sections and a blank went through with the same courier and without tariffs. I don’t think ~$600 is reasonable and makes even less sense because these were on $200 value packages. These were shipped with UPS. We will try next shipping via FedEx because a 300% tariff is complete nonsense.
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Well, am I a showboat, and if so, then is it reasonable for me to be one or not? I have been told that a good instructor doesn’t throw pointy loops, tight accuracy loops, or distance casts around students. The reasoning behind this idea stems from the thought that when students see loops or casts that are difficult to do, they will be intimidated, feel bad about their progress, and be more likely to quit practicing. This isn’t an outlandish idea. People with certain personalities in certain circumstances react in a myriad of ways to the same stimuli. Something very similar to this can be found in the people that call me, “the saltwater guy.” Trout fly casting instructors in certain parts of the world feel threatened by people that can throw distance. So, they write me off as the distance caster, and their egos feel safe once again. I hope they never suffer the psychological trauma of seeing me cast in other ways.
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We’re on the second leg of my big bye-bye, visiting my son and daughter-in-law in Vienna. We took a train to Salzburg to look around and found to our surprise and delight that it’s a big week here, the celebration of St. Rupert - the Salzburger Rupertikirtag. Rupert, who lived in the seventh century, was the founder and patron saint of Salzburg in both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, and was known, among other things, for establishing the salt mining industry here (hence the name Salzburg). He’s often depicted carrying a bucket of salt. Last evening the crowds were huge. There’s kind of an Octoberfest vibe. Lots of beer and trad wear, Dirndl and lederhosen - the general term is tracht. Lots and lots of tracht. It seemed like half the women wore dirndl. And they were young. It seems like everyone has some. When do they buy these clothes? How often are they worn? There’s no real equivalent in the US that I can think of. I suppose there’s trad-wear within various ethnic communities but these are fragmented and smaller groups - not a national uniform. Rupert’s celebration will last all week. People were having fun and as of 9:30 last night, it looked like good family fun beer- drinking not withstanding.
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Do you know about Paul’s stupid bell? You probably do and if you don’t you should know and will know soon at least. I know about the bell. I know a lot of things that Paul talks about. The problem is that I’m stupid and forget about all the smart things Paul tells me. I’m trying to better, I’ve started to write down all the smart things I “discover” during practice. Well I have been writing them down but random or structured notes on the computer doesn’t seem as effective as writing them down with pen and paper.
By “discover” I mean that it can be things I’ve found out earlier, by myself or being told by Paul. I can spend a whole training session in frustration only to rediscover something that I should’ve known. Can be both frustrating and quite entertaining. Very entertaining when Paul tells me how many times I have discovered something.
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Last Friday I was fishing and teaching my nephews. It was an absolutely great day, despite weather. Well weather was kind of okay too, sun, +20 celsius... but wind....Winds are getting much powerful than normal. Blows were really strong and dropped lots of leafs from trees already.
Normally when first leaf goes on water graylings shut their mouth for few days. On Friday not sure if it was because leafs or my desperate dry or die with wind, as all bigger graylings were missing. We caught some okay graylings and even smaller trout, yet no big graylings.
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As promised, this week I'm following the dry daddies with what I'm calling wet daddies. Although there's one that might not really be a wet, one from last week works wet and I deliberately left one out.
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James and I are just back from a lovely weekend casting and socialising in Jersey. We held a BFCC Casting day with the Jersey fly anglers on the Saturday. James and I had intended to have a casting session with some of the Jersey casters before the event, however our flight was delayed and sadly we missed it. We had three BFCC casting instructors joining us for the day however one of them nearly didn't make the weekend when he went to the airport and realised he didn't have ID as he was about to board the plane. Somehow he was able to blag his way on to a later flight the same day.
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It was bloody excellent to catch up with Stuntman Ronan again. I was mildly disappointed by the lack of stunts however. I tried making some interesting suggestions that I thought would have appealed to Ronan, such as to climb stumps or rock faces, but it may be now that he has children to support, that his death defying stunts are on temporary hold. So the only stunts that I saw on this trip were fish in the boat.
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I suppose that if I took a deep look inside of myself and had to be honest, then I would say that I have a healthy problem with cool fly-casting gear. Just to let you all in the loop here. I do not think there is a fish, a fly, or a habitat that I cannot dust off a fly setup for, but that is intentional. What if I get invited to do Goliath Grouper on fly next week? I am ready. It really isn’t all that bad. Every single rod I have gets used well, and most of them are still doing what they were intended to do. My wife proofreads these…
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I love this place. The terrain is similar to that of nearby Cape Cod. There are relatively sheltered beaches facing Long Island Sound on the west margin, and rugged, rocky Atlantic facing beaches to the southeast. And there's the Great Salt Pond, a sheltered body, where my daughter and son-in-law are living on a miraculously inexpensive sloop. It’s connected to the sound by a channel to the northwest. There are stripers, bluefish and albacore to catch all summer and its shoulders. A lot of people fish the beach. The Coast Guard Channel is a prime spot right now for albies. Fishers cast metal lures (typically 4” long and slender) into the moving tides. Flyfishers typically cast a local 3” long epoxy-headed eel imitation available at the Twin Maples fishing store. I saw no fish busting, no fish caught while I was there. Only rumors. I’ve got to go more often to get smarter and luckier. .
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Last weekend it was the Swedish nationals in fly casting and casting sport. The event it self was great and I’ve heard that efforts are being made to make it even better and bigger next year. The really good things were that we had a good number of volunteers to help with everything, a speaker system and efforts to make it more clear for the audience what’s going on. These are things we must be better at to attract more people. If you see some sporting event going on but you cannot understand what’s going on it is hard to get interested in it.
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This week has been warmer than usual for this time of the year. We have had +23 celsius on daytime and nights has been around +13 celsius, days has been with high humidity. Normally it is 5-7 celsius less. I don't complain as I can go around with t-shirt and shorts. Especially having t-shirt on, I like a lot. I don't like to wear jackets during summer season.
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Since I'm still not getting out fishing, I thought I'd write about another beastie this week. As it's that getting time of year and I mentioned them last week, I thought I'd go with daddies.
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I saw a hand specialist at the local hospital last week, a bit late having injured myself in April but that's the Welsh NHS for you. The upshot was that I'd have probably been operated on if I'd of had my accident at home, but as my 'recovery' was so far down the line, operating now would come with absolutely no guarantees that any improvement could be made. As such, I'm now waiting for an appointment with a physiotherapist plus I'm on the list for some nerve conduction tests to try and bottom out why I have such limited movement and why my hand goes numb after only a few minutes of holding a fly rod.
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Ronan is currently visiting for four days of fishing. Hopefully by the time this page goes live he will have hooked and landed a Snakehead! So far we haven’t flipped any boats, or been electrocuted. But the adventure is still young!!
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I’m not sure if it works this way with everyone, but as I spend time on a skill or a hobby, I tend to keep moving the goal posts to make things harder. I used to really enjoy hunting deer, but I only get the intense exhilaration when hunting them with a bow. There is just something about honing your ability to accurately shoot, putting yourself in a situation where you may see your quarry, and being so close to them in the heat of the act that you can smell their breathe. Unfortunately, that time of year has been taken over by fly fishing, and I don’t expect there to be many changes to that anytime soon.
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Labor day has passed. The prime corbina season is slipping away. I don’t have a lot of good shots remaining this year. I’m sad. I extended my range a little and drove up to a beach north of Ventura. Surfline had predicted a small low-energy swell but, alas, the swells were two feet anyway and came in every which way. I fished the quarter moon so the tide was a bit too high and the beach too steep throughout the morning to allow fish to feed leisurely. Also I got there a little late. But as I walked the beach I immediately spotted some backs and fins amidst the chaos. But when the waves are energetic and inconsistent it’s hard to follow the fish or predict exactly where they’ll pop up. I was reduced to fishing the water with a pinkish-orange corbina crack fly. I hooked up once but lost the fish after a couple of runs. My take away is that the fish are often in tight and feeding but conditions dictate whether they can be spotted. They’re in there. God knows what they’re doing and how they’re feeding. Thank goodness casting is a pleasure and that it’s not insane to fish the water.
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When you want to improve in some technical activity it is good to think about technical aspects. Why and how things work or not. Look and analyse what top performers do good, what they do and still perform good. Everything a top performer does isn’t the most optimal thing to do, sometimes they do perform good even though they do something a bit wrong. But sometimes you pick up bad things from this, when you do you hopefully quickly find that it wasn’t good for you and can move on. Sometimes you can really get into trouble just because of thinking.
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Busy August is behind. It was good one, lot of guiding and some own fishing included. First half went more or less with making silage and other stuff. Then we really kicked off. Really good days with guests, August is still my favourite fishing month here.
I missed last week’s FP as we were returning from Sweden and driving home on last Friday. Satu was too tired to drive so I had to drive and I couldn't write FP. Thursday evening went around snooker table as we had some really tight games with Stefan. We played until 3 am.
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I've been talking to a few guys back home this week. And one hatch has come up repeatedly: the redlegs or heather fly. It was always one of my favourite hatches/falls back home especially in the late summer.
(POD Sandy Rae - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)
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One of my students recently recommended the “With Winning In Mind” podcasts. I’ve been enjoying them so much I’ve ordered the book! Not just for me in fact, but also and primarily for my coaching.
I had an excellent discussion some years ago with Phil Blackmar on this same subject, which I’m including today if you haven’t listened to it yet.
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With the removal of “de minimis” in the US it’s worth pointing out that we pay tariffs/ import duties as they may appear around the world and the listed prices of 1145, 1195 and 1295USD is the final price you pay. This also includes International courier service and so this is the total price to your door. Usually any duties we pay to the courier but if you do get landed with a bill we will refund you. The same applies in the UK with Brexit and anywhere else for that matter.
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It is pleasing for me to see that I am not just writing my thoughts and stories down for Paul to read and then give me words of encouragement on my progress in therapy for the week. It seems to be a resounding yes that we should meet the students at their level. However, it also seems that if instructors don’t involve themselves with specific parts of learning theory, they cannot be good instructors? Also, some of us weirdo instructors understand what it is like to step back and watch, “the wandering haulers,” as I call my students learning to haul while walking. BUT… It seems like there is a large elephant in the room that I think we ought to give some peanuts before it gets angry. Can there be a unified theory of casting that is undeniable? How ought we respond to the dissemination of bad casting content? Are we all interested in people getting better, or are we using various platforms to self indulge with an argument from time to time?
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