Mojo Night

Sometimes i get a great urge for some tying, and tonight it came to me . I used the mojo to make som "promised to friends flies". I made a batch of Catskill dry flies for my friend Martin Stout, a great tyer that recently discovered the magic behind the gems from the charmed circle of the Catskills The other part of the batch goes to another friend Mikael Larsson a fantastic photographer and charcoal artist, with some luck he will find some time to draw my Catskill dry fly patterns. I will keep the chubby ones crossed.

Atherton No:5

Quill Gordon

Red Quill



Conover

Over and out
Niklas

Great Feathers

Great Feathers in this case is a company truly worth it´s name. I try not to mix up my writing too much with making advertisement for my suppliers etc.. but.. This time I really feel that I need to make an exception. I meet David one of the staff members in Somerset for the International tying symposium, Great Feathers had a both there just beside where  Iand the other Vikings were tying. We got in contact when I helped one of their customers to find som decent stuff for some serious Spider tying. Since then I have been in contact with David a couple of times. First time was when I needed a nice black hen cape, David sent me nice pictures and gave med lots of time over mail until I finaly decided. Next stop just the other day, I am in need of a Coachman Brown cape, I think David must have given me at least an hour of his precious time just to get me lie 15 pictures so I could make a decision. Wow, this is what I call a salesman, it wasnt excactly what I was looking for but I will order it anyway, I loved the colour, and as you other tyers know, we cant get enough of the gadgets...

Great Feathers sells loads of different feathers, they got Partridges and othe gamebird skins from Cookshill in Enland, capes from Bobs and Collins and loads of other stuff...

Check them out www.greatfeathers.com.. They have their own forum aswell, I think I will try that for a while, there are some serious tyers on that forum.

Later
Niklas

Ps.. nope I didnt´get paid for this!

Life is about more than just flytying...

... some times we need to let the vise take a rest, why not try some fishing. My friend Gunnar from the fishing club and I have for a long time talked about that I should follow him to his secret grayling place in Gysinge. I have never really belived that it was possible to catch nice grayling this far south.. I was wrong...

Gysinge is an old industrial town, loads of history, nice buildings and surroundings. The area around Gysinge is a big nature reserve with loads of different animals and nice forrests. For the fisherman Gysinge can provide loads of different fishing, Pike, Perch, Sander, trout, Grayling are proborably the most interesting species to try your luck on... enough advertising :-)

To reach Gunnars special place we needed to take the boat, the stream was between two islands. The water was a little high but as I heard a vise man say "the fish like water". Gunnar told me that the dryfly would proborably not give me any strikes, for some reason this particular stream very seldom give  you a fish on the dryfly. Offcourse  Iddint believe him, tried a Royal Wulff, maybe 20 minutes. Then I decided to listen to my guide, tied a small quillbodied beadhead. First cast gave me a nice little grayling, maybe 35 cm. During the 3 hours we were fishing I caught 4 grayling around 35 cm and on just over 40 m.

Offcourse we also found some time to sit in the boat enjoying a nice cigarr and  a cup of coffee. I never thought a place under 50 minutes from my home could provide fishing this nice. Thanks Gunnar, I had a really nice time....

Atherton flies

Godmorning to you all..
The last couple of weeks has actually given me time to tie some flies. After I spent some time on my friend David´s blog reading about John Atherton and his flies I couldnt bringing out the vise, thank´s David. David ties a really mean dry fly and is very devoted to th the Catskill Style Dry flies, keep it up David.

I will get back later with more of theses flies, I did offcourse order the Atherton´s book, The Fly and the Fish. I have decided that I will try to dig a little deeper in to Atherton as a person and a flytier. Atherton is quite interesting he was a wellknown artist in the states, published a lot of covers for papers and posters for events etc

Now I am offcourse more interested in the flies but the thing is that the flies and his feeling for art is connected. Atherton was very keen on getting his flies "impresionitic" he meant that the bugs we are imitating was built up by different colours. To imitat this he worked with mixing up the dubbing for the flies to get the colours that he wanted. But more about that later when I have read the book, hopefully it will come soon :-)

I did try the Atherton No:5 which is the most common one. The fly is supposed to have oval tinsel, i didn´t have that so I used flat tinsel which offcourse doesnt give the fly the same chareteristics but let put this one in the practice category.

Over and out...