There have been a few boat articles on the Front Page lately, and Paul’s piece about
management and fishing at the same time struck a chord.
I like fishing. I also like projects. So a boat was probably inevitable.
Meeting Paul, and then spending a week on his boat, really opened my eyes to how good a fly
fishing boat could be. A year later Ronan took me onto a southern South Island lake in New
Zealand. We had both wanted to see if it lived up to its reputation. It did.
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Here in Malaysia we are in the midst of a heatwave, that is forecast to continue through until June. The good news is that this means that Sungai Tiang will most likely be gin-clear for any fishing trip, barring being exceptionally unlucky.
It is possible to fly here direct from Europe with Malaysian Airlines. I’m sure there are better airlines flying direct too, for example Singapore Airlines. Obviously stopovers in the Middle East are difficult or impossible at the moment and tourism at the resort has about a 15% cancellation rate as a result. Flying from Australia or New Zealand presents no problems at all.
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I’ve been brewing a few cups of coffee daily in an Aeropress for more than 15 years. This morning, for the first time, I peered into the side of the cylinder as I pressed the plunger. A new gaze in a new direction - new information. Despite thoroughly mixing the fine espresso grind just before inserting the plunger, there was a visible schmutzdecke on the filter at the bottom of the cylinder and a relatively clear layer of water above. I had always thought that the coffee layer took more time to form and imagined a suspension of grounds moving downward slowly. It’s not what’s happening. I can’t un-see it. My new understanding is bound to affect the way I push the plunger one way or another. I assume this is often a part of learning a skill. Knowledge of cause and effect, developed over time, brings context to movements. Despite my newly embraced soft-quiet-gaze and emphasis on cues and context in the peripheral field, If I didn’t have knowledge derived from watching others, learning from videos, and my wandering eye I don’t think it would work. A corollary to the parable about the blind monks and the elephant might be that the sighted story teller doesn’t see the whole elephant clearly either - unless having examined the parts and imagining them as they look at the whole.
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The boat is still mine, I think
Got a message from the marina today, your boat is launched. Good news as I might have been a bit late to get it in the water before April first when I contacted them earlier this week.
The ride home was bumpy. Not as bad when I drive it to the marina last autumn. Then it was a bit scary. Big waves from the wrong direction.
And driving the boat home today was cold. I guess Paul could’ve taken some of that cold as he looked a bit warm when we talked today.
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Heat wave is still on here. On daytime around +5 celsius and nights barely 0 celsius. It has been some rain also. Only good thing is a wind, it has been slowing down snow to melt. We had last charter flight groups on Monday. Friday we still have one group for reindeer sleigh ride.
Our trails are still surprisingly on good even great shape. Hard work and knowledge when and what to do seems to pay off sometimes. We still have about 50-60 cm good ice, yet it might be gone too early. End of next month we have this group coming again on their ice fishing event. Fingers crossed.
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Here's a great fly; Dan Blanton's Whistler. With or without the flashtail it's a great choice for so many predatory gamefish and certainly not only the stripers it was designed for. I like it for largemouth bass, catfish, seabass,pike and perch. I know others who've used them successfully for tarpon, dorado and barramundi off the top of my head. I'm sure the list is MUCH longer.
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Our flight over to the Bahamas this year was rough. For the last four hours the pilots kept the fasten seat belts sign illuminated because of the turbulence. A number of times the captain apologised for the rough ride over the intercom, noting that there was nothing they could do; up, down, and any path deviations would all be the same according to reports from other air traffic – he did mention we had a headwind of over 100mph at one point, so I guess they were fighting the jet stream. Booking in for our Bahamas air flight the next day was equally stressful. With our trips being so long we tend to travel with three luggage cases, we book this in advance with the airline. Whilst at the check in desk things were progressing as normal as the first two cases were tagged and transported into the back via the conveyor. We then lifted the last case onto the scales (the important case with all the fishing gear in it!) - this seemed to take the airline employee totally by surprise. This started a conversation about how Bahamas air no longer allows passengers to take extra luggage.
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Last weekend, on my long indoor endurance ride, my bike trainer suddenly stopped working. I think I’ve had it for 6 years and it’s had a hard life. I immediately ordered up a replacement but this is not the best time of year for a fast delivery, because most of Malaysia is on holiday. The roads are packed and I for one don’t go anywhere near them! So whether or not I’ll have a new one for next Saturday’s ride is yet to be seen.
And it’s really quite warm here for Malaysia. Highs this week of 36C (which apparently “feels like” 38, and in my boat is actually currently 37.8). This is not atypical for this time of year. Most of the year is 32-33, and it’s actually very noticeable when temps pass 35.
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There has been some really excellent thought-provoking FPs from David on fish spotting, as well as on peripheral vision in flycasting. It’s something that has come up more often for me this year, as returning anglers choose to spend some time fishing alone in my second fishing boat. And I’ve struggled to know how to explain what I do and have had to be more conscious about it in order to explain it.
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I posit that there are two kinds of fisherman - good athletes and not-so-good athletes - I am a proud member of the second cohort. My greatest athletic flaws come from excessive and varying, narrow, focus and over-thinking. I’ll characterize my lack of fast-twitch muscle, smallish stature, and lack of physical bravery as secondary flaws. My guess is that good athletes come upon the grace that comes with the right gaze early and apply it widely, learning quickly. Great athletes add the ingredients of physical strength, speed, size and grit.
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When I was active in olympic weightlifting sometimes during the training cycle I did two sessions in one day. Mostly because of that’s how “the big guys” does it. It can be useful and work for a regular person without the tools and improvements the pros in that sport has. If you have the time and split a regular session into two sessions you can get away with slightly more volume, and more importantly keep focus on more technical aspects of the training. So for the fly caster this could mean that two sessions, one for accuracy and one for distance will be more productive than combining the events in one session. Or focusing on two different things to work on in the technique will be more efficient spread over two sessions than one.
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My daughter asked me to find specific photo about me. I knew that it has been taken and I kind of knew that it will be somewhere in cloud. Only clue was that I was holding spesific antlers. So that meant that it had been taking after 2016, ten years of photos.
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We're a wee bit late today, but I've been out fishing. The Henshall bass bug; this week's fly is, unusually, one that isn't a quick and easy tie. But it's not necessarily that much more trouble than others of its family.
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Well I finally got round to doing some fly tying whilst Tracy was away for a week working. I suspect I'd been putting off starting due to some anxiety regarding my dexterity after my accident last year (a badly broken hand). I haven't recovered full movement and neither do I expect to now, however things weren't as bad as they could have been and my fly tying was up to its usual mediocre standard (which is usually good enough to fool a bonefish).
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Thanks Paul for inviting me in.
I grew up in New Zealand. I have always loved fly fishing. I also always knew I could be a lot better at it. For years I was a typical fisherman. Out one to three times a year. Catch the odd fish. Have a good time.
Then Covid arrived and the world changed. I realised I genuinely loved fishing. In New Zealand there is no shortage of places to do it. So it seemed sensible to get better.
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What an incredible weekend of rugby. Just amazing and what a conclusion to perhaps the most fascinating Six Nations tournament ever!! That was worth staying up for. Even if the France-England kick-off for me was at 4.10am! Talk about stepping up for high pressure moments.
The final kick of the tournament… success wins the match and the tournament. Missing not only loses the match but also the tournament. Millions of people watching. And Ramos kicks the ball dead straight between the uprights. Brilliant. Just brilliant.
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Spent last Monday with Makani Christiansen. I was wrong about his service last week. He's a Marine not a sailor. We fished a big offshore shallow flat in Kaneohe Bay within sight of a well known sandbar where locals and tourists go to picnic and turtle-watch.
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Not long until we are in April. Something a lot of fishermen have been waiting for. It is time for seatrout fishing. It will be interesting to see how this season starts as it has been very cold until recently.
And as usual I haven’t tied a fly during the whole winter. Not that it would be possible anyway as that would mean that I would have to fish with old flies and old ideas. The best fly in the box is always the newest one you tied. The latest idea tends to be the most interesting to tie on when you are at the water.
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Friday 13th, some could say it is bad luck day. When I was working for Finnish army, it was kind of lucky day as salary was paid 15th of month and if it was 13th Friday... it was payment day. I'm writing this FP on Thursday evening, so I don't know what Friday 13th is bringing. I expecting worst and hoping best.
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This week it's the Sedotti slammer. Ages ago I wrote an FP about Mark Sedotti's weighting system that allows large flies to be cast with relative ease. It's essentially the opposite of what was, for the longest time, the received wisdom on big flies.
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There really are just not enough hours in the day at the moment! Many of my Zoom students are coming out of hibernation. The good thing about the US clocks change is that instead of teaching flycasting using the stern floodlight at night, is that I can be up early in the morning, teaching during my sunrise. No wasps! I don’t know why wasps come out at night in the jungle but they do. It can be entertaining but sometimes I could do with a little bit less entertainment in my life.
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We are waiting on rod tubes and components and then Andy is going to be in a tornado of his own. I’m looking forward to seeing this happen. As soon as we have supplies we will plan far enough ahead that we don’t run out. That’s always fun.
Over in Europe we are starting to get Spring orders for the Tortuga. So if you are after arguably the best fly rods in the galaxy then please get in touch!
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What an extraordinary 6 Nations rugby weekend! Rugby is one of those sports that if you grow up playing, then you enjoy watching when you are too old or sensible to play. I, like I’m sure many others, am less interested in seeing a particular team win than I am in seeing a great game played. I grew up playing no8, then moved to blind-side when I stopped growing taller. Wasn’t really fast enough off the mark to be an open-side, but that was my favourite position.
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I’m flying to Honolulu but I’ll have to wait until Monday to test out my new soft-gaze on the local bonefish. I’ll be fishing then with Makani Christiansen who hosts Fly Fish Hawaii. Not sure what we’ll be doing. I hope the joint military bases are fishing well. Makani served in the navy and has access to some beautiful wadeable beaches and inside-the-reef flats. But every place he’s taken me to, on foot or from the boat, on the base and off, has been great.
I have been practicing the soft gaze in the park, by focusing on a distant point and looking for movement within a fixed wide window. So far what I observe is that out-of-pattern off-center movement immediately draws my eyes to its source. Could this be what I’m looking for? I’ll see (ha ha).
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I recently was saked to help to design a fly casting challenge/competition. It should be used for a remote cup in Sweden, it should work for both beginners and offer something for more experienced casters. It was decided to be an accuracy challenge and introduce the caster a bit to the discipline. We settled for two hula hoops as targets, 60-80 centimetres in diameter. This choice was made since it is close enough to the real targets and is easy to obtain. I also decided to put the closest target at 10 meters and not 8 meters. This might be surprising to some people, especially those who have not done a round of accuracy targets. But I think that a target at 8 meters or closer to the caster is a hard cast.
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Last weekend was something we have never done before, at least this time of the season. Before Covid we use to have night over in Rovaniemi or if lucky even two nights. Afterwards it feels funny as before Covid you could actually find hotel room with decent price and even get one.
Now if you look prices in short notice in Rovaniemi, you have to pay easily 300e/night, which is double before Covid. So when we started to have idea having break, Rovaniemi was out from list, not only because price. Another reason was that we had no desire to spent our holiday with tourist.
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As we return to the fly of the week, I thought I'd look at the pattern I mentioned in last week's coverage of the 3wt Cup: the deadly crystal shrimp.
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Tracy and I are not long back from our trip to Spain to compete in the 'Master De Lanzado A Mosca' casting event organised by the CNL (Comision Nacional De Lanzado). We had a really great weekend, made even better by the weather – in contrast to the rain, snow and hail of last year we had lovely warm sunshine. In fact it was the first time this year that I've cast in just a T-shirt, that said most of the Spanish casters were still wearing thick coats and hats, so I guess our definition of 'warm' differs considerably.
After some morning sight seeing and a leisurely lunch in Guadalajara on the Friday we were invited to a presentation 'evening' at the Fly Centre in the outskirts of Madrid. When I messaged to say we were heading over I was corrected regarding the time – apparently in Spain anything up to 9pm is the afternoon no matter how dark it is. Unfortunately we got delayed in the afternoon rush hour traffic on the A2 and didn't arrive in time for the presentations, but we did get there for cheese and wine and socialising outside of the tackle shop. After picking up some fly tying supplies and some big streamer flies (hopefully for chucking at cudas and sharks in a few weeks) we headed back to Guadalajara for a couple of beers and an early(ish) night before the casting competition the next day.
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Now this might seem like I’m the last person to issue this sort of advice. I must have broken a couple of hundred fishing rods. I’ve cast them to death, I’ve jumped on them, I’ve thrown them over cliffs, I’ve driven over them, I’ve driven away from them while leaving them on the car roof, I’ve broken them trying to unstick from snags and of course I’ve been unlucky.
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Since we announced that Andy Dear is building Sexyloops rods in Texas, there has been significant interest in purchasing rod blanks. Thank you! However, unfortunately we are not set up to sell blanks in the US. We have sold a couple in the past to long-term Sexyloops’ readers, who enjoy building their own rods at home. Not many; a small handful. But more than this doesn’t work for a few reasons…
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I am seated at Nassau’s Lynden Pindling airport waiting for my flight to Los Angeles, reviewing my return trip to Acklins. First, the experience and skill of this year’s group members blew me away. They were all fine fellows and their enthusiasm, diverse interests and good will added joy and energy to our outings. I hope to fish with them again. Sticking with Getaway Flyfishing will make this a real possibility.
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