Looking back

I started tying flies the winter of 2005-2006.. I still remember going in to that fishingstore finding the "start flytying kit" and I felt that I got to few christmas presents so offcourse I earned that box. Many hours and curses later tying the flies from the manual I gradually needed something new to try out. So I found what here in Sweden is considered to be the Swedish flytiers holy bible Lennart Bergqvists book "Flugbindning på mitt sätt" or in english "Flytying my way".

In this book I found a fly that really got me started was Art Flicks Variant. Still today this fly is one of my top fishingflies. Love to tie it , love to fish it....

I didn´t know then that it was a Catskill style dry fly, the tying style that now keeps me busy reading, tying, dreaming etc etc.. The thing that really caught my attention was then the body made of quill, more specific hacklestems. After getting to know the material a little I then started to experiment widely, putting hackle-stems on almost eveything. A fly that came out during that time was variation of another fly found in that book, the Streaking Caddis. A true fishing fly that´s responsible for many trout and graylings. The body is on the original fur but on my variation of it offcourse hacklestem. I have never liked using varnish, messy and takes to much time to dry. On this fly I want atleast two layers to give the body a nice depth, so I quickly found that clear superglue made a nicer body more quickly as the time for each layer to dry was reduced.

A couple of days ago my friend Ulf Hagström reminded me about this fly, and we agreed to do a "one on one" swap. Great as I wanted some of his wicked emergers and the fact that I felt the urge of doing some Streaking Quills.. The one on the picture above is made of stripped ginger hacklestem, black thread and three layers of clear superglue. The Streaking Quill is also one of my absolut favourite flies to fish and tie.

Quill Gordon

What could be better to start up the blog of 2011 than with a true classic Catskill Style Dry fly. The "Quill Gordon" or "Gordon Quill" Theodore Gordons legacy. This is one of my absolute favourite flies to fish and tie, both offcourse equally important. Gordon tied this fly in different shades and sometimes with a gold wire to get a bronze shade to the body.

A couple of weeks ago I got a copy og John McDonalds "The Complete Fly Fisherman". In this very heavy volume of flyfishing history I found loads of intresting stuff to read. It´s easy to get kind of afraid of the book at first sight as it is loades of pages and small letters. But I assure you, it is great and full of nice small talks and letters.

Here is what  Gordon wrote to G.E.M Skues on May 7, 1906
"I would like to have you try the following. Body plain quill, peacock, light color, hackles and tail, light blue hackle, wings wood-duck plain, mottled from a good sized finely mottled feather, using double for each side of the stem. I usually varnish the foundation to strenghten the quill. It is a light blue quill with wood-duck wings, and I will gamble on it killing, if dressed to suit the water..."

As well as I love to tie the classics by original recepie, I also sometimes love to play a little and do some changes to them. One idea I have had for a while is to put a boddyhackle on this lovely pattern. With a body hackle I believe this fly will work even better in rough water. I didn´t wan´t it to bushy though so I stripped one side of the feather before wrapping the bodyhackle. I didn´t want to strenghten the hackle with wire or thread either because I wanted as much of the quill possible still visible, so I gave the quillbody a small amount of clear superglue before wrapping the bodyhackle.

I´m really looking forward to try this one on Trout and Grayling hiding in the rough water. Will do my best to try and remember to tell you how it worked.