Back in Business

10 months since my last blogpost, in that post I said I was putting the blog to sleep.. I have thought about it for a while and  feel that I want to wake it up and see how it feels bloggin again.

Lots of stuff have happened that inspired me to try again.. I have become a Pro Staff member of Partridge of Redditch, I signed the contract a couple of days ago, it feels great, have really missed some of their hooks. Mark also showed me some new stuff coming out on the market that looks really interesting. I have also joined the Pro Staff of Polish Quills, I have used their quills for more than a year now and their stuff is pure quality.

So to celebrate these events... a Steel Blue Quill tied on a Partridge Spider Hook and with a quillbody from Polish Quills.

Over and out.../Niklas

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.

Winter nights

You relly need to talk your self into some positive thinking on days like this. The snow that we got last week now melting away and leaving a mess. Well a good thing is that it´s easy to talk yourself inte sitting down at the vise, reflecting over the past season and making plans for next. I just love sitting by the vise dreaming away. At Bffi  I got something to dream about, I got a really sweet offer making some DVD´s with Roland at http://www.sporting-scene.com/ so now I´m kind sitting and making plans for that, very exciting.

Made this little bug tonight for a Swap i´m attending. I call it a "Lazy Man´s Black Gnat"

I will leave you with some words from one of my heroes Theodore Gordon:

" It is a bitter winter´s night and I am far away from the cheerful lights of town or city. The north wind is shrieking and tearing at this lonely house, like some evil demon wishful to carry it away bodily or shatter it completely. The icy breath of this demon penetrates through every chink and crevice, of which there appear to be many, and the wood-burning stove is my only companion. It is on nights such as these, after the turn of the year, that our thoughts stray away from the present to other scenes and very different seasons. We return in spirit to the time of leaf and blossom, when birds were singing merrily and trout were rising in the pools. We remember many days of glorious sport and keen enjoyment, and then somehow our thoughts take a turn and leap forward. Spring is near, quite near, and it will soon be time to go a-fishing. We want to talk about it dreadfully. O for a brother crank of the flyfishing fraternity, one who would be ready to listen occasionally and not insist upon doing all the talking, telling all the stories himself. But if we cannot talk we can write, and it is just possible that some dear brother angler will read what we say upon paper".