Monday, April 25, 2011

Technical problems

I've been suffering from technical problems lately ie. my internet connection keeps disconnecting all the time. Sometimes it stays totally offline for hours. It's been like that for two weeks now and my ISP seems to be unable to fix it because the problem is most probably in the cable itself.

Another technical problem has been the lack of spare time. For the last three weeks, I've been doing long days at work and haven't had time to do any blogging at the office. On the other hand though, I've managed to gather myself a good 1.5 weeks of extra holiday. Hopefully it will be the full 2 weeks before the mid summer, meaning a total of 6 full weeks of continuous summer holiday!!

That's it for the bad news and now, the good news: Spring is finally here and all the remaining ice is melting away quickly! Yesterday I had a little sightseeing by the sea and the local river delta. By the sea, the shallow bays had lost there icy covers, just some lonely pieces of ice were floating around. The open sea was still under ice but its disappearance seemed to be just a matter of days.

The river has lost its ice a long time ago and I did some hiking in the bushes to find a little pond, invisible from the surrounding roads. After a while, I got to the pond that had a shallow water passage to the river delta. At the very same moment, I managed to scare off a dozen ducks, who left the place with horrible noise and splashing water. After a few minutes, I saw what I came there for: A couple of small pikes circling in the shallow water, possibly getting ready to spawn. Well, it's pretty early for that and it will probably take a few weeks before the spawning starts in the full scale. A good start anyway!

Now I need hurry up and get my tackle sorted out and fill all the fly boxes. It just feels unreal, after those five months of despair it starts all over again....

Friday, April 1, 2011

Easing the pain....

Finally, the weather forecasts are telling good news. For the next week, temperatures should stay above zero even by night which is the key factor in making the ice melt. And no, this is no April Fool's tricks!!

Just to maintain my (partial) sanity while being kept away from the water for five long months, I've tried to keep myself busy by tying flies and testing new equipment.

I tested my latest fly rod, Colton Tradewinds #9 9', which proved to be just what I expected. It's a powerful casting machine, capable of casting heavy lines with ease and produces high line speeds when necessary.

To compare it to my favourite rod, Five Rivers FT #9 9', Colton has a stiffer tip section and and it is more front heavy, making it a bit more heavy to do powerful casting strokes. I'd say that Colton could be regarded as a #10 rod, where the FT is a #9 fast-action rod. Colton is a saltwater rod with great ability to lift heavy sinking lines and re-cast them with longer overhangs. FT can throw almost any line because of the fast, but sensitive tip. The blank is very light and the rod feels like casting a #7 weight rod.

Where the FT shines in soft power delivery, light castability and yet very high line speeds, the Colton is a brute. You can and should use a little more force and all the force goes to the kinetic energy of the line. It will also help when casting big flies in windy conditions, with a cost of an extra effort. We'll see how it performs in one month or so.