fredag 30 maj 2014

The Big ones is here

Godmorning my friends.
Not far off now until I once again stand by the shore of Stavre in north of Sweden. I have been there in the beginning of July as one of the staff of Swedish magazine "Flugfiske I Norden" for the last three years now. I could blame the fact of being among the staff, or the weather, lousy flies etc... ok I admit, I have not catched a single decent fish there, offcourse some smaller fish, but not those bigger ones that we know are there. This year I decided that I will be better prepared, and give the evening fishing more time, I wont give up until I get a decent one. So I have now started to build up my boxes for the event. As I most tie classic stuff I don't have many Danica patterns, so that one is kind of a puzzle for me. I saw my friend Joe Bonasera tying up some extended bodied flies with deerhair thought I should give that a go as I thought it looked interesting.



I tied the body on a needle, attached three long fibers from a moosemane then I took white dee hair and tied it in by it tips at the point where the tail would end. Worked my way forward just as you do with foam for the "Mohican Mayfly", first attach deerhair, fold back and some thread under, fold forward etc. When done I took Deer Creek Diamond Flex UV resin and covered the body with that to make It slightly more durable. A set of Adams wings so I have something classis on the fly, a Cree parachute hackle, and some Squirrel SLF as thorax.

I actually liked the result, with time we´ll see if the fish likes it as well.. I wont make many of them though.. it wasn't easy to get the tail right.

Over and out
Niklas

tisdag 20 maj 2014

Royal Coachman Fanwing meets FMAO film crew.

Evening.. Here´s another fly from the same session as when we filmed the Quill Gordon. I can tell you one thing about filming, it isn't easy to get the words right. I am pretty pleased anyways as it´s my first time doing it and I am deeply impressed by Eric and Johannes job with their cameras and Eric´s hours he put down on cutting and getting suitable music to the clip. It´s like the Quill Gordon in Swedish but hopefully some of the pictures talks to themselves.
Too see the clip just follow the link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IKzCFQP-mw&list=UUD0vzHjKxXVYbQ53uqC-IxQ.

Over and out
Niklas

söndag 6 april 2014

Quill Gordon meets FMAO crew

Evening my friends.. It just struck me.. Last fall my buddies Eric and Johannes from FMAO productions released a filmclip of me tying a Quill Gordon... But I have forgot to share it here with you guys. Some of you might offcourse already have seen it but anyway..

I am really proud of being a part of this, not so much for my part of it, it was my first time behind a camera so lots of improvement needed. But I must say that they really captured the feeling of flyfishing and flytying with the intro. The intro is in English but the tying is on Swedish, but the pictures talk for itself quite good I believe.
Follow this link..Quill Gordon


Over and out
Niklas

söndag 30 mars 2014

Mörke John -wrapping hackle and finishing a fly

Evening dear followers, today I played with a pattern called "Mörke John" ("John the dark"). The fly is a variant of the more famous "Europea 12", same fly but with different colour. The fly "Mörke John" comes from the vise of Harry Strandberg who comes from the northern part of Sweden. Harry is unfortunatly no longer with us, he passed away a couple of years ago. My friend Leif Milling has written a nice pieca about his friend Harry in his book "Länge leve flugfisket" (Flyfishing, may it last forever), Harry was actually one of the first professionell flytyers of Sweden.


I like the apperence of the pattern, and after fishing in caddishatches in the parts of where Harry was active I do understand why hw choose the darker colour.

While tying this fly I decided to take some pictures to tell my friends how I do the hackle and how I finish of a hackled fly leaving a decent head. As we all know this information is more for the eye than for the fish... I dont either think the fish cares if theres a bump at the head or if we have some hacklefibers sticking out here and there. But I do belive in the satisfaction a really nice fly in my flybox gives me.

To get an nice and straight hackle on your dry flies can sometimes be an pain. Well offcourse thereś a question of the quality of the hackle, but not just that. Some really nice hackle can have stems that are not entirely round and sometime the stems are kind of thick which also can make it harder. Well anyway, here I want to share some thoughts of mine that has helped me to get a slightly better hacklecollar on my flies.

I use the best hackle I can get, I use Whiting, Charlie Collins and I also have a Keough that was awful until my friend Roy Christie dyed it for me, after that the stems got softer and by that the hackle got easier to work with. When I started to tie I had som Indian capes, I have heard that you can find decent quality, but the nice ones that I have found dont have the length of the feathers in the sizes I tie. So I have given that up and I stick to the genetic stuff.

Well then, let me try to explain, start with making sure that you have a nice and even foundation, bumps can make your hackle slip. Tie in the hackle in and set it into an 90 degre angle towards the shank of the hook. Make sure that the hackle has a bare stem the first wrap, that will help us to not get any fibers pointing backwards.


Wrap the hackle in tight turns toward the eye of the hook. Secure the hackle with three hard turns of your tying thread, wrap the thread towards the eye of the hook.


Grab the hacklepoint and fold it backwards, wrap another three tight turns of thread but now backwards away from the eye of the hook. By doing this we have locked the hacklepoint.


Take your hacklepliar and attatch it to the hacklepoint, hold the thread tight as you start winding the hacklepliar. After a couple of turns the stem of the hacklepoint will brake off at the point of where we are have the preasure on the tying thread.


Here we can see the result after that the hacklepoint has gone. Now give the head two wraps of thread and finish it of with two whiofinish knots.



Cut the thread and give the head some varnish. Done, with a nice and clean head. Satisfaction on a hook... 



Hope you enjoyed it this little session,  I did.. 

Over and out../Niklas

lördag 29 mars 2014

Reflections

Last weekend  It was time for Swedens biggest fishingfair, the Sportfiskemässan at Kista, Stockholm. This fair is about fishing in common, but it has a reasonable amount of flyfishing. I have been there the latest 6 years as a tyer at the tyers row, well not hard to get a seat as I am the one organizing it :-). Anyway, this year  I decided that the crowd would get a chance to see someone else than my face at the row so Instead of tying at the row I helped my friends at Swedens greatest an most beautifull flyfishingmagazine, Flugfiske I Norden. And I must say as much as I missed my buddies at the row it was really cool to be tying alone at the magazine, i believe the crowd were calmer and not as stressed of neding to see all tyers at the same time, I had a busy and really enjoyable weekend, the saturday was maniac though 7200 people in one day. People really intested in this stuff should really learn to go on the friday or the sunday which always are more calm.

Here is how our wall looked, really nice with some really cool pictures taken by photografer Svanthe Harström.

We had a really great crew in the both, we were lead by the boss William Moberg Faulds aperson who puts loads of efforts in running the magazine, more than anyone can imagine. We had Mr and Mrs Gullstrand helping us out with selling subsciptions and other stuff. Lasse Hallberg our editor, wow he was one great salesman, calm and full of knowledge I was really impressed by him. Svanthe Harström a really funny guy, also a great salesman and ambassador of the magazine. Not to forget Joakim Blomkvist, Christer Holmberg who also did a great job during the whole weekend. We had some other guys aswell helping out parts of the weekend, Mikael Åkerlund for example. We got 50 new subscribers, and several of our subscribers who extended their subscription for another year.

Here is me caught in action by another photografer, Joakim Blomqvist.


I concentrated on tying Catskill style dry flies, here my Variant of the legendary Quill Gordon, I call it the Rough Gordon. I really love this one, appealing for the eye aswell as for the tyer.


Also whipped up a batch of Dark Cahills. I had one of my newly founded buddies Jan Johansson joining me during the whole process in detail of making one of these puppies, and boy itś cool to see that he in only a few days after that session has improved his Catskills loads. Offcourse he got the fly to bring home as a momory of our session. I really enjoy these moments when tying at fairs when you get to meet poeple with a genuin interest.

Also found some time to tie up some orders on my Steel Blue Quill. Itś great to after a while of tying 15 minutes flies just get crazy in making a batch of 3 minute flies :-)


Also made a batch of Gunnar Johnssons Kneckestorparen for my own fishing, I have never tried it but  I really like the idea of this fly.

A sad thin happened while we were buildning the tyers row, while my friends Anders Grünning and Markus Hoffman helped me out building the tyers row somebody breaked in to Anders car and stoled Markus bag containing a whole winters production of display flies and flies that he was supposed to be selling at events during 2014, I dont understand why there are people out there who has the need to do stuff like this, sorry for your lost my friend. If any one see a batch of really ice wooden boxes with flies for sale by suspicious people, dont hesitate to contact me. Another friend Eric Andersson lost his camera at the fair aswell...

Next year the fair will be held in Jönköping, south of Sweden. Weĺl see if I will be int the both of the magazine or at the tyers row. Havent decided yet..

Over and out
Niklas

måndag 24 februari 2014

Out of my comfort zone

A good thing now and then is to work slightly out of your comfort zone, both in real life and when conducting your hobby.  I do have a love/hate thing with tying flies with slip wings. I kind of get them right sometimes, well that isnt good enough is it... So tonight I was on training camp.

The pattern I played with is a really old pattern, a Red Quill. Well yes the same name as Catskill style dry fly by Art Flick. The fly was first tied as a wet-fly in 1803 by an English tyer Thomas Rushworth. The fly is later mentioned as a dry-fly by no other than F.M Halford. Halford writes that "the fly is one of the sheet anchors for the dry-fly fisherman on a strange river". So, the pattern has some serious experience catching fish.

I managed myself to tie three of these, It took some time but it was worth it, I got pretty satisfied with all of them. I choose the fly because I promised to send my buddy Chris Sanford some "Halfordian" flies to be auctioned of at a charity event on the Test later this spring. Hopefully they will ride a riffle on the Test, maybe at a one of Halfords favourite spots.


Over and out
Niklas

måndag 13 januari 2014

Preparations

Well.. Not long til itś time to start packing for the best event of the year, British Fly Fair in Stoke England. I have been tying at this event several times before, it was actually my first tyersrow. This year I managed to get my fiance to come with me aswell, exciting to see if she appreciates the people and atmosphere as much as I do.

I have wanted to make some nice display frames to bring to events, to show a selection of Catskill flies in a nice way. When working with dry flies it isnt that easy though, there are not that many frames suitable to hold a dry fly. Atleast I have had problems getting frames with a decent look. So this year  I took the time to buy some frames that I liked, and then I rebuilt it to fit my fry flies. And I have spent a week or so to tie the flies on old size 12 Allcock handmade hooks, the real deal.

And I must say... I am quite satisfied with the result..


And a close up on the flies

Conover

 Dark Cahill
 Deer Hair Coffin Fly
 Delaware Adams
 Royal Coachman Fanwing
 Red Quill
 Quill Gordon
 Whirling Blue Dun
There is also a March Brown and a Ginger Quill that I forgot to take photos of, sorry :-).. I made three frames that I will bring to the BFFI, so if anyone is interested, just tell me...

Over and out