Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 2 May 2026
I just saw a post from a physio mentioning that hotter weather means that some people get problems with swollen feet and legs. This made me think of white mans feet that happens in the jungle. The temperatur shift when going to the jungle is a bit more extreme so the people experience it here in Sweden during spring but the solution could work for both cases. The reason being that fluids cannot be transported away efficiently and the solution suggested is to strengthen the calves.
Last weekend I arranged and participated in a small competition. It became very small as we lost half of the participants for various reasons. So three casters and one brave volunteer showed up early in the morning. To hopefully avoid the worst of the wind. That didn’t help, the wind was strong and the water was gone. Where we had planned to place the accuracy court there were just sand. We ended up standing in the sand/mud and cast into some shallow water. That was the best we could get with that wind direction.
The wind was so bad that we had one target that only got two hits from the total 48 casts.
I managed an impressive 32 points and ticked away 10 points on the easiest target. The other two casters scored 37 points. The fastest caster used a Method 9 for his round. Something I realised then that he uses in every competition.
When we moved from the water to the grass for casting the wind conditions changed. Less wind but more turbulent. The winner had 41.0 meters in the 5wt, I got 36.8 and the third got 33.5. A bit uneven here. I did regret my choice of rod here I was thinking of switching to my 10 from my 7. But I wanted to try the 7 in a whole competition. Later that day I brought out the 10 for some testing and had a number of long casts. One that I decided to measure was 44 meters.
In seatrout it the wind had stabilised a bit. Now the results were more even. Winning caster got 49 meters, I got 47 and the third 46.
Me and the winner of trout and seatrout had a got at the salmon distance. I did as I do when I cast salmon, I borrow a rod. The first caster got some decent casts, but you could tell that the wind was a bit strange. Side wind where the caster were and some puffs of tail wind further down the court. He got 52.4 meters and I thought that looked good for the conditions. Then it was my turn I didn’t think that I got any good casts away. But I kept going. When my round was over I got to see that all my casts were beyond 52 meters, well even beyond 54 meters. My best cast here was 55.8 meters.
Maybe I should give this discipline some serious consideration.
So now I have some ideas how to choose a rod for competition. Previously I had this idea that a stiffer rod could help mask some errors. That a stiffer rod allows to recover from some errors. Possibly it can be so. I think it can help mentally to choose a rod that the caster feels like the caster can power through some parts of the casting cycle without risking to crack the rod. That it could be so that it takes more skill to cast a soft rod really well in the heat of a competition or that changing rod for competition can take some time to adjust to. It wasn’t the best conditions to try a new rod in competition and I’ll revisit this in the future. But for now I’ll stay with the 10.
And I didn’t get white mans feet in the jungle. So I guess I have that going for me at least.
Cheers, Rickard
PoD: There should be some water under the jetty.