Rickard Gustafsson | Sunday, 17 November 2024
I like long lines. I have always liked long lines. Well, at least I would like to think so. Since I have tormented myself almost from the beginning with long lines, I must like long lines. One thing I am quite sure about is that persisting with long lines has helped my development.
I got introduced to long lines not long after starting out by the great guy Tellis Katsogiannos. First in an article about casting into the wind, use a long belly line to carry into the wind instead of shooting. Then buying long belly lines from him. Then getting a lesson by him. And now we are team mates in the Swedish Fly Casting team.
I must admit, the course/lesson I got from Tellis was quite a bit better than the course I wrote about in my previous front page, at least for me. The course with Tellis was about five months after the first course I attended, so I had some training done this time. But now we got some theory before starting out. We got the five essentials explained before starting out and more theory followed that day. We got tools to understand why things went wrong in our casting. I was a better caster after that day.
I got some other things with me from that day. Something I didn’t pay much attention to then, some guy named Bernt happened to be mentioned during theory that day. He was apparently casting five weight lines on a ten weight rod to get maximum distance.
The other thing was something that did stick directly. I got told by Tellis that if I learnt to carry the lines I had bought from him, then I would be able to cast anything. Long belly lines with a 17 meter head that was. Something that gave quite a bit of grief in the beginning. Going coastal fishing with a long belly line as a beginner without much training with long lines isn’t very productive.
The grief from the lines was overcome fairly quickly.. At least to a level where I was able to fish. Something that kept giving grief that season was my fishing buddy that for almost a full season got to keep asking me “Are you sure you shouldn’t put that fly thing aside and pick up the spinning rod again, like me, and start catching some fish again?”
I didn’t pick up the spinning rod again. I persisted with not catching any fish for a while that season.
I got my reward at the end of the season for persisting. I did catch the biggest seatrout my friend and I had seen and still haven’t seen any bigger.
POD: First seatrout I caught on a fly rod, not the biggest one.