Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 5 April 2025
I had the whole winter to get a lot of things going—both small things and big things. Small things like making sure I had the correct line on my reels for the opening day of seatrout season. I got totally done with that the night before, or maybe the night before that, and the last night was spent looking over the fly boxes and tying leaders. Then there were the big things, like planning competitions and get-togethers for casters, which could have been done during the winter.
Planning competitions and get-togethers—I did try a bit during the winter to get things going. But I’m not alone in that planning. It involves talking with the rest of the fly casters in Sweden. And I find it kind of fascinating. We have the whole winter to plan and do stuff, but the fact that we only get daylight from 9 to 15 for almost half the year seems to affect us quite a bit. And by daylight, we often just mean “less dark.” Most days are just a grey tint—kind of dark and gloomy. Somewhere in the middle of March, people start to wake up from hibernation. And on the last Sunday of March, people really wake up. That’s when daylight saving time begins. Suddenly, the days seem endless.
In just a few days, we got a spontaneous competition planned. Next Saturday, me and some of the other fly casters will meet up and do a couple of rounds of trout accuracy, trout distance, and Spey 15’. That’ll be fun. And in a few weeks, I have a fly casting demo booked. I’ll do a presentation about the fly casting sport—why fly fishers might want to practice their casting, how to practice, and hopefully get someone to join our nationwide casting club. The club I somehow ended up with a lot of responsibilities in—just by showing up to a meeting. I was only there to find out if something was actually happening or not. It wasn’t. But now, it feels like the wheels have started to move. I’m not totally alone in the effort—we’re three people working hard to get things going, plus a few other fly casters helping to spread the word about fly casting.
There is one big challenge, though, when it comes to getting people interested in fly casting—at least when it comes to showing up to meets. The fly casting season is almost the same as the fishing season, at least for most people. Apparently, most folks don’t go out in winter storms, rain, and other less-than-pleasant conditions to practice casting. The number of weekends people can escape their other responsibilities is limited, and for some reason, fishing tends to be prioritized over fly casting meets. So my hope is that this winter, we can get at least one fly casting competition planned indoors.
This Tuesday was the opening day of the seatrout season. I didn’t take the whole day off to go fishing, but by lunchtime, I couldn’t take it anymore. It was a beautiful day—sun shining, not a cloud in the sky, almost no wind at all, and unusually warm for an April day. Conditions don’t get much worse than that for seatrout fishing in April. Even though it was a regular workday, quite a few people were out fishing. Regular people, not hardcore fishermen. Not that clothes make the fisherman—I also do a lot of fishing in jeans and a t-shirt—but there were a lot of people in regular clothes with a spin rod and no clue how to cast. That kind of person. The kind who almost never fishes was out fishing. I find that fascinating.
I think our fishing rules could be better to make life easier for the seatrout. I have a suspicion that having the opening day on April 1st makes it very hyped. If opening day were in the middle of winter, we’d get a more spread-out pressure on the fish. Now, a lot of post-spawners get caught and killed in April, which is legal if they meet the size limits—but eating a post-spawner isn’t very fun. Mushy and tasteless meat.
What’s also strange is that we have different opening days along the Swedish coast. The west coast opens April 1st. The south coast opens January 1st. And the east coast is open year-round, with protected areas.
Did I catch any fish on opening day? No—just had a take from a small one that did a long-distance release. And I can only blame my skills as a fisherman, since a lot of others had great fishing that day. Some really big fish for our area were caught, which is fun to see. Our area—the west coast—doesn’t produce as big specimens as the south and east coasts. It’s a combination of salinity and food sources. I don’t know everything about it, but I’ve heard our population grows faster in the first year.
Cheers, Rickard