Soft caddis on the new Partridge spider hooks

When I was at the Somerset show in the US in November I met my good friend Mark Hamnet from Partridge hooks and he waas kind enough to hand me a pack of the new Partridge classic Spider hooks. As you know classic spiders might not be my prefered style of flies to tie or fish with, but I do love the type of flies because they represent so much history in fly fishing and are also beautiful to look at. I’ve had them laying around here ever since and today when I was cleaning out my big fly tying bag I found them and kinda just sat down and freestyled a kind of soft CDC caddis on the hook. If you ask me it looks nice. Eventhough it is not a spider.

Hook: Parridge cic spider #12
Thread: Veevus 14/0
Body: Stripped peacock quill Yellow
Wing: Three small CDC feathers natural
Thorax/head: Two partridge feathers and three CDC feathers in a dubbing loop.

 

The best tying thread I’ve tied with!

Late last year I started to hear about this new tying thread from Dernmar: Veevus thread that looked interesting. I got my hands on some spools about two months ago and have tied with it ever since. And I won’t probably need another thread ever again, that’s how good I think it is. Not only does it come in ALL sizes imaginable: 6/0 8/0 10/0 12/0 14/0 16/0 and in like 10-15 different colorus, it is also the strongest thread out there compared to it’s competitors. They also have this fantastic thread with a strange name “Stomach thread” that is something that can be used instead of antron yarn, floss etc. and also a perfect thread for pike flies!

Breaking strength per size:

uni 6/0 = around 930g
Gudebrod 6/0 around 920g
Danville 6/0 = 450g
veevus 6/0 = above 1kg

uni 8/0 = around 450g
Gudebrod 8/0 around 450g
veevus 8/0 = above 1kg

Gudebrod 10/0 around 270g
benecchi 10/0 = around 680g
veevus 10/0 = around 800g

benecchi 12/0 = around 450g
veevus 12/0 = around 530g

Griffiths 14/0 = around 450g
veevus 14/0 = around 520g

Danville 16/0 Spider Web = abt 141g
veevus 16/0 = around 430g

Seriously, the Veevus 16/0 has almost the same breaking strength as the UNI 8/0! Take my words, this thread will be the one that fly tyers choose from now on!

Quill emerger

Seriously, fishing emergers is one of my favorite types of fishing. So may fish has been caught with the Klinkhammer special or my SRM emerger, often even when it was no fishing rising.  I’ve been playing with the Polish quills a little bit and came up with this using two different colors of the quills. CDC cover and black hare’s dub for the thorax. This time I also wanted to try a reversed emerger, like the ones Roy Christie does. It’s an intriguing style of fly that looks different and fishes very good!

 

A love story for the haters

I am in love.

I’ve been in love since I was about three years old, or rather it was  a fling until I was seven, then I f ell in love for real and it is a life long love story.

I think about my love every day, when I wake in the morning and when I go to sleep. I look at photos of my love, and long til we meet next time.

No, I don’t have a trout stream behind my house so that I can fish everyday after work.
No, am not single without kids so that I can just drop everything and go fishing whenever I want.
And no, I can’t go fishing every weekend like I want to.
And no I can’t go fishing all summer.
And no I can’t afford to go away abroad on 3-4 weeks fishing trips.

Do this mean I don’t qualify as a real fisherman? Do this mean that I don’t count and that my opinions don’t count? Does it really mean that I am to be excluded from some sort of fishing community? I sure hope not.

Do I wish I could do all those things I can’t? Of course, but my life situation don’t allow it. My kids mean everything to me, and I wouldn’t change this for the world but that doesn’t mean I don’t suffer from not being able to do what I love the most; fishing.

I’ve seen people start fishing and then after 4-5 years go on to try something else. I started fishing when I was 3 years old, and frankly I have gotten to love it more and more the older I get. Last year I had 26 fishing days, at least that average a day of fishing every other week, not close to some people but it was what I could manage. Does that make me a fake fly fisherman? Is it only the amount of fishing days that will judge as a proof if you love fly fishing or not?

I love fly fishing, I love the way of the /:Fly:/ and I love the camaraderie that I get from my true fishing friends.

Last but not least, I love fly tying too. I really do, but it is nothing but a bleak imposer when it is compared to the love I have for the fishing. Don’t you forget that.

I am in love, and I suffer because it has been two months since I last met with the love of my life.

For all the non believers and haters: I got nothing but love for you.

Small head bangers

Seriously my friends, these past weeks has been turbulent. My business has exploded with 8 new dealers comming in over the past two months and that has put me in a tricky situation but I am slowly catching up and to be honest this was kinda what I was hoping for anyway but it has in combination with tough times at the regular job left me with very little time for anything else. So sorry my lojal followers that I haven’t been blogging much lately.

I’ve put some time at the vise though, main goal to tie up fish skull patterns for the comming two big shows here in Sweden in march. I have really fell in love with the Small fish skulls to use for small zonkers!

 

Still at it

So we finally got snow and fshing seems just a little far away for the moment. But it it less than two months until Pike season starts for real and as long as the winter doesn’t get any worse than we are having for the moment there should be open water to fish all the time. So it is more a matter of getting the time to get out (as always) and wanting to get out in minus degrees and snow.

For now I am still tying streamers and most of them are zonkers. The colors and the quality of those Polish quills Superior Zonker strips are just fantastic!

As many of you know the hype around the fly Pattegrisen for coastal sea trout has been uncompared over the last coupe of years, it seems like everyone is fishing it. Some people claim that it is the pink color that is the secret behind its success, so I did a couple of zonker streamers in the same pink color, let’s see how they work for my friends as they go sea trout fishing at Gotland in a few weeks.

I’ve also been doing more small streamer/baitfish pattern for the rivers. I really have confidence in these smaller patterns, 3-4 cm long they should be perfect for trout h in the smaller streams I love to fish. Like this one!

Zonker mode: ON

I’ve gotten into a real streamer mode these past days, especially in a real zonker fly mode! Was trying out the new zonker strips from Polish quills and made this very simple but very nice looking streamer with a head from flash dubbing. How about these?

Quills

As you all know by now I run a small wholesale company since about a year back. What I am doing for the moment is trying out a few new products to see if we are to take these into our range for 2012.

One product that are definitely going to be in our range are the Stripped peacock quills from Polish quills. Great quality and also they are a different material that are quite unique, just assist of the other stuff I’ve taken in during last year.

Anyway, I tied myself with the quills today and wanted to share this little Baetis nymf I did. I haven’t tied quill bodies more than maybe a handful times ever so I am quite pleased with how this turned out.

More light box photos

Still with only two small desktop lamps on each side, nothing on top, and the crappy 18-55 mm kit lens (wish I could afford to buy me a macro lens…) and with that in mind I think the results are really good.

I have added my own White balance but I need to adjust it a little because the  photos gets a little grey. F11 /2,5 s / ISO100 are good set ups for most flies but for the awesome Steve Silverio fly below I used F28 to try and get full focus on the whole of that big fly.

Yeah, I cranked out some of the flies I got as gifts or swaps in the US and practiced the photographing with the lightbox on those because I wanted to try it on some larger flies.

First this fantastic deer hair tube tied by Steven C.Washer

The I took a bunch of photos on this again fantastic deer hair fly tied by my homeboy Pat Cohen:

Lastly I gave this big Steve Silverio fly a try, as I said I needed to use much wider apperateure for that and it was the hardes to get a good clear light photo of, probably the kind of motive that would benefit from a third light from the top too.

Here’s the basic set up on the fly tying table, I actually like to use “Live view” on the camera when I am taking these shots or hook it up to the laptop and use that as a remote.

Lightbox

I worked this past weekend on making a real lightbox for photography of mainly flies. I did one very fragile about a year ago with only regular printer papers but this time made it from a real sturdy cardboard box.

The base for the lightbox, but not finished on this photo

Once it was finished I just took it to my tying room and lit it with my two small desptop lamps and nothing else, the result are quite good. I am gonna try and add a third lamp from the top too.