Operation Stillwater - first pics

After a lot of hard hard work and even more thinking an tinkering: The first few pics!

...a bit about the rod: This rod is a finished prototype for a rod-series specifically suited to fishing on reservoirs. When I started thinking about this rod the general idea was that I wanted to build a rod that is fun to fish. Not an overly stiff broomstick, but a rod that makes you wonder where that big smile on your face just came from!
A nice progressive bend, built with quality components and a classy look were the three key elements.

The rod is build on a blank from the boys and girls at CTS. In my opinion they build the best blanks in the world. I decided upon a length of nine and a half feet.

The extra 6 inches can make a lot of difference when you're fishing whether it's from the bank, the floattube or boat. The rod in the pics is a 6-weight but can also be build on a 5 or 7-weight blank if that's what your looking for. 

If you are interested in the rod or have a question, send me an e-mail (wavingastick@gmail.com) or send me a direct message @wavingastick on Twitter. 

Spring is here!

Here's a few pictures from fishing together with a few friends earlier this week.
In the morning the fish were cruising high, but nothing was hatching. We did see some flies floating by which might or might not be alder flies blown onto the water by accident. Even though there is some debate about whether or not these flies are on the trouts menu we gave it a shot anyway. I tied on a pattern that roughly fitted the ballpark and mimicked the struggle of the insect with a small twitch every now and then. As it turned out, this was a very successful tactic. The first two fish I caught made a bow wave in the surface and devoured the flies.
Even though it was a bright and sunny day there was a half hour when I caught the biggest fish of the day on a small black midge emerger during the sparsest of hatches. A 1,5kg fly that decided to tear of my whole flyline and quite a bit of backing. This doesn't happen very often on this water. The fish give you a nice fight, but this fish was very strong. One to remember and hopefully the first of many longlasting memories for the 2011 season.

Who Knows...

Went out for a quick and unexpected short trip this Sunday.
My brother in law wanted to go out and fish with a flyrod for the very first time in his life.
So on Saturday evening we went out into a field where I gave him a quick rundown on how to cast the flyrod and let him have a crack at the basic overhead cast and the rollcast.

When we were out on the water the next day, I noticed my brother in law having some trouble with the overhead cast and saw him naturally switching to the rollcast.
The whole experience made me think back of my first times out on the water with a flyrod and all the hundreds of tangles I had to untangle before I could finally get the fly where I wanted it to be.
But anyway, it was also clear what a great cast this rollcast really is.
It allows you to think about and there's lots of room to explore the strengths and weakness of your own technique and it very quickly lets you concentrate on the fishing.

I drove home with the reminder how good a practice-move it is to practice this cast. Because you only need to think about the flyline going forward, you can really zoom in and focus one of the many elements of which the cast itsself is made of.

That "breaking it down, zoom in and focus" - thing will be my mantra for the next casting practice sessions.
Give it a go as well, I think you will find many great and not-so-great things there.

And did I catch any fish?
Well, I did actually. The first rainbow on a dry fly for this season. Just over a kilo. Yeah Man :-)