Japan Has 2 Seasons

 Another repost from www.sexyloops.com

Japanese people often seem obsessed with seasonality, you'd be amazed how often people tell me that Japan has 4 seasons. Sometimes they even say it's a unique feature of Japan's weather! The thing is, it doesn't. It has 2; Hot/wet and cold/dry. There are about 2-3 days between them. Temperatures have been down towards single digits from up in the thirties last week. Which despite being a bit of a shock to the system, is good.

The seabass fishing can really get going now and I took my pal John out for his first ever fishing trip on Monday. He had recently got himself kitted out with a spinning set up and assured me he had been practising casting a little dummy plug down the river. So out we went, it was a cool 8 degrees and a little windy with clear skies. The slightly stained water made for excellent conditions. I fully expected John to get a fish or a few. We arrived at the first spot to see a few bass smashing bait near a large factory intake. John's first cast went up on to the concrete wall, the next straight in at his feet. After a bit of help we got him casting reasonably well and his little minnow plug was getting into some reasonably good areas. One fish did hit it on the surface but he had so much slack line out he was completely oblivious as to why Capt. Masuda and I were telling him to set the hook. All part of the learning curve. He was also struggling to see the fish boiling at the surface and asked if I was sure they were there, so I picked up my 6wt with a 3" rubber candy and cast into the next set of splashy rises and caught a nice fish right away. Not only did it mollify John a bit, watching me cast into the activity also showed him what we were seeing so he'd be better at seeing it himself.

A few rogue waves had a wild-eyed John ricocheting around the bow, with cries of "I don't have my sea legs yet". While I had fully expected him to lose at least a few lures, get tangles etc. I hadn't really anticipated that aspect of the boat trip. I probably should have but I suppose familiarity with boats makes you forget just how alien they can be to landlubbers. The rest of the evening we stayed tight to shore in and around the city, fishing mainly calmer areas as he got used to the boat's movements. It meant big fish were unlikely, but that was fine. The main thing was trying to get John into a fish. As the night went on he started getting more used to casting and standing up. There were still rogue casts that saw me climbing out of the boat to free his lure from docks but eventually he hooked up, unfortunately the fish came unstuck. But it was enough, his expectations had been low and he'd seen me catching a few. On the way back in he was asking Masuda-san about lures to buy and asking me when we could go next. A bit more practice first I think, but it's good to have someone get into the sport. Then, once he's got a hang of the spinning rod, we'll get him on the fly... Then fly tying.