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

Grey Partridge (Grey Watchet)

At the moment I´m in something who can be reffered to as a "Spidermode". Working on the script for one of my coming DVD´s, one of the two DVD´s will be about Spiders or North Country Flies. The DVD will not be about me sitting and telling people what´s right or wrong, it will be about the flies and how I tie them, about me and my view on flytying and to show that you don´t need to be a "procaster" to catch fish. More about this another day.

Grey Partridge or Grey Watchet 

I´m thinking of putting this one in to the DVD. I like the apparence of it and it will suit the period of when we will be filming the fishingparts. The book of T.E Pritt "North Coutry flies" says that the fly works best at cold days, and in the evenings during June and July.

Recepie:

Wings:  Hackled with a light feather from a Partridge´s breast.

Body:   Straw-coloured silk.

Head:   Peacockherl

1.  Start with your thread behind the eye and wind 4-5 turns back, this will give you a nice foundation for the peacock herl that will be tied in later. Tie in your Partridge breast feather, backside up. Cut the excess material.

2.  Wrap your thread in tight turns back to where the hook start´s to bend. Turn and wrap to just behind where the hackle is tied in.

 3.  Wind the hackle, I took two wraps on this fly. Catch the hackle with the thread.....

4.  ...and work the thread through the hackle. Stop the thread behind the hookeye. 

 5.  Tie in the Peacock herl.

 6.  Wrap the peacock herl around the thread to make yourself a "Peacock herl thread". You can offcourse wrap the herl as it is but this will leave a less durable Pecock herl head.

 7. Give the head 4-5 turns of "Peacock herl thread" and finish it up with a 3-4 turn of Whipfinish, give the thread some extra wax before the whipfinish, that will make it a little more durable. Now we have a classic North Country Fly ready for those cold early summer night´s..

Stewart Black Spider

The "Stewart Black Spider" is one of my three favourite Spider patterns, both to tie and fish. So this afternoon I tied some "Stewart black Spider" one of three "most killing" spiders from W.C Stewart´s book the "The Practical Angler", a fly that´s more than 150 years old, and still going strong. W.C Stewart said "we were first shown it by James Ballie, and have never been without it on our line since".

1. Start with your thread on the middle of the shank.

2. Wrap your thread to the hookeye, create a small head. Select a feather with a fiberlength equall to the shank and tie it in.

3. Lay the thread on the inside of the featherstem and put together thread and feather with a hackleplier.

4. Twist feather and thread with the help of the hackleplier until it looks as on the picture. I use to help the fibers some with my fingers.

5. Wrap the "hackled thread" backwards 3-4 wraps and tie it off. Cut off the excess of the feather.

6. Make some 3-4 extra wraps of thread and whipfinish behind the hackle.

Quill Spiders

This weekend I played with my favourite material, Quill. The quill i´m refering to is in this case the quills that you get from stripping the fibers of rooster neck feathers. I got the idea to the first one from my favourite fly, the Red quill originated by Catskill tyer Art Flick. A pattern from the 1930´s if I not remember wrong. Another favourite material is the feathers from the Partridge skin, really love those "spotty" feathers. And finally a real "oldie" when comes to material for flytying, Peacock herl. A material usen on fishcatchers for centuries.
So a fly containg all of my favourite materials, this must be the fly that will make my dreams come true. Like many before...

Red Quill & Peacock

Light Quill & Peacock

A killing duo

Stewart Spiders

I found the Practical Angler by W.C Stewart online. As I have heard a lot of nice words regarding the Stewart Black Spider it caught my interest. So I read through the book, the chapter of flytying got my biggest interest of course. I got very fascinated in the writing, the thoughts presented by Mr Stewart, and I got the feeling of that not much has happened the last 150 years.

After reading it I got stuck with his "Three killing Spiders" Black Spider, Red Spider and Dun Spider. I felt I just had to do something to show my respect to these fantastic little bugs. I started with the most famous one of them.

Black Spider

Hackle: Starling

Thread: Brown Pearsall´s silk

The "Spider" more known to the word as the Stewart´s black spider is actually not Mr Stewart´s own pattern He mentions in his book that -the pattern was shown to us by James Baillie and has never been missed in our boxes since. So you could say Mr Baillie showed the fly to Mr Stewart and Mr Stewart showed it to the world.

After this fantastic pattern I continued my quest with giving the Red Spider a chance.

Red Spider

Hackle: Landrail

Thread: Yellow Pearsall´s

And as the third of the three killing spiders, was the Dun Spider. This one got me most confused as Mr Stewart left out the colour of the thread in the book. My first thought was then that it should have the same colour as the hackle, I felt that it made sense in some way. I thought Black spider -the dark one, Red spider - the light coloured one and finally the Dun spider as compromise in between. Well I obviously thought wrong, I thought Dun was grey when it is more gray, yellow creamish. I finally found out that the colour of the thread should be yellow.

Dun Spider
Hackle: Dotterel or Starling, inside wing

Thread: Yellow Pearsall´s

I must say that I got really fascinated of the whole thing with these spiders. Reading the book, making the flies etc. I felt I needed even more of this, I wasn´t quite ready yet.. So I decided to make my very own tribute to W.C Stewart. I made three decent buggers and while doing them I started to think of the layout. Found a nice picture in the beginning of the book, also borrowed the book´s title. And finally I was ready..

Next quest will, of course, be to try these bugs out on the fish.