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.