We did not have our usual major gathering of incoming and outgoing guests on Wednesday evening because those with a few hours left wanted to get out and fish one more time so they had an early dinner and went fishing and we had dinner with the new arrivals.
Little Blackhall Lodge where we have lunch.
The weather had not changed but the river had ceased to drop and in fact came back up to 3ft which is perfect for the beat. The results were the same sadly with never a cloud in the sky. But that was genuinely not why people had come and it was again very satisfying to see such major improvements. There was Jane, who went to Norway last year and struggled due to her casting and what turned out to be her unbalanced equipment. We sorted that out and played to Jane’s strengths and soon had her casting the whole way across the Dee. She learned the ‘circle cast’ as did everyone else. There were two Andrews, one who had never used a double handed rod before who really got it very quickly and the younger version who did not realise he was attending a casting course but loved it and learned a huge amount!
The upper sections of Little Blackhall and Inchmarlo.
These beats are ideal for teaching with multiple casting platforms.
As usual, the main issues were tackle set up with the most common cause being too light a line for the rod. You can just see guests struggling, working so much harder than they should do. We would change lines for them and it is as if a light bulb has come on, suddenly they are not struggling any more. The other debate we had was the objective to teach spey casting verses the need to prepare someone for a specific destination. In Jane’s case, we knew the beats she would be fishing in Norway again this year and it was unlikely we were going to get her spey casting the distances she needs within three days so we taught her all the disciplines to change direction and then went for the overhead cast which she could do very well. This worked well and what was interesting was that the spey casting got better and better as the week went on.
The Circle cast looking upstream.
Left hand single spey looking down river.
For both the three-day courses, we had wonderful people and really enjoyed having them. Thanks to you all for coming and we hope to see you again next year or hear stories of your successes!