Lessons learned (so far)

This summer I bought my first set of fly fishing gear truly ready for salmon fishing. It is still only one hand 10 feet, 8 AFTM rod and reel and lines suitable for that. I'll report my evaluation on pros and cons of this set later. But the main thing was that I got my first shooting head line and started practicing under arm casting with it. Below is the list of my learnigs related to using shooting heads:

- Shooting heads don't come in the right length out of box but you need to cut them to the right length. The right lenght depends on the rod, your casting skills and the circumstances where you fish, ie. the river size, the strength of the stream and wind

- You can come a long with only one floating shooting head for salmon fishing, but it's not ideal. I think one should have a couple of different length floating shooting heads for different water and weather conditions. In addition one intermediate shooting head would be good in case the water is high. This is enough if you only fish in small or medium size rivers like Vetsijoki and Utsjoki. If you fish in big rivers also, I guess you need to have even more sinking shooting heads.

- Once the shooting head is of right length, you can really have long casts quite easily.

- The upper cast is not as light and fun with a shooting head as with WF line if you fish in a very small river where you don't need long casts.

- I don't recommend 10 feet long one hand rod for shooting heads. It is a bit too long making casting pretty hard for your wrist. I did a lot of double handed casting when I needed long casts because I left the shooting head still quite long (and thus heavy) to be able to have longer casts when needed.

- It is best to start learning under arm casting by taking a course or having someone there to guide you. I didn't have anyone to teach me and I didn't have time to take a lesson or course before starting. I have to say it was even dangerous at times. I got the fly to my back and neck couple of times (luckily I had a coat and a hood on) and even hitting me finger couple of times. Once the fly bounced in the back of my head. I'm lucky to survive without fly ripping off my ear or something.

- If you don't have anyone to guide you, search web for help in casting. I found f.ex. these helpful: Caddis expert and Spey video clips.


Other learnings:

- Lohenkalastajan käsikirja is really a good read for any (finnish reading) person interested in salmon fishing.

- Do test your tippet line before starting fishing. It's not fun to loose a nice fish and a good fly because of bad tippet line.

- When the water is high, do use bigger flies than in normal summer water conditions. Take also into account that the colors that normally work in certain river might not be the best when the water is high.

- Always keep a loop of loose line in your hand so you can release it if a salmon catches the fly when the line is straight and tight, as it usually is at the end when the fly and line is almost directly downstream from the fisher. This gives the salmon some time to really bite the fly and get it stuck in its' jaws.

Lost a good fly to a salmon

I had an interesting fishing night last night. I was fly fishing salmon in Vetsijoki river. I didn't catch any due to combination of bad luck, bad equipment and maybe a pinch of incompetence :)

First couple of salmons that I had contact with last night didn't stick in the fly for more than a few seconds. The same problem with both of those, the line was almost directly towards down stream when they caught and I didn't have a loose loop in my hand that I could have released when I felt the fish there. This usually leads to fish not sticking tightly to the hook.

Couple of hours later a third salmon bit the fly...again the same fly, red butt. It was a bit like this: http://www.sorro.com/red_butt_sorro.php3. but it was bigger and had some flashabou in it. This time the salmon was tightly hooked. It gave a good fight for it's size (seemed like a bit over 3 kg) as it used the very strong stream in the rapid for it's benefit. At times I had to keep the salmon pretty tight as I had to stop it from getting into a very fierce rapid 15 meters downstream from where I was. Finally the fish got tired and I got it close to me but I didn't have a net or a striking hook with which to get it up and the water was too deep where I was to go to water and lift it up by hands. I started to look for a place to get the fish up and there was a nice place 10 meters downstream but I couldn't see any suitable size stones there for knocking out the fish as it was all one rock. So I looked around me and saw a perfect stone there. I leaned down and picked up the stone thinking next to walk the fish down to the place where I can get it up. But just when I got up the salmon took the last spring they always do and went to the strong stream in the middle of the rapid...and snap the tippet broke off.

The line I used for tippet was no good and the rod was in pretty bad angle when the fish made it's final spring, so the tippet couldn't take it. I must confess that I cursed pretty strongly when this happened. It is bad enough to loose a salmon when it's that close but I also lost a very very good fly. I still feel like crying just to think about it.

Oh well, that salmon was not mine and the life goes on. Today I have to go shopping for better tippet line and need to try to find a couple of good big salmon flies as I have now lost both of the bigger flies I had caught salmon with. I have plenty of good size 10 and 12 flies but now there's so much water it's better to use bigger flies than normally in these smaller rivers I like to fish in. Next winter I'll start practicing fly tying. I'll write about my experiences in learning that then.