Another tying video done!

Having had so much fun doing that Wild thing tying video I decided to let the cat out of the bag and do one for my absolutely most successful fly of last season. I developed it as a tube fly during the spring but when I adjusted it as a articulated hook + shank fly during the summer it really started catching fish after fish! There are a few things that I can add that’s not visible in the video itself.

It’s tied using three layers of Nayat pelt over Bucktail that is gradually flared out more and more to create a fly that has a lot of volume but still a hollow take to it. In order to achieve the right effect consider this:

– Keep all layers of Bucktail quite sparse, that goes for the Nayat too, if the fly gets too bulky it will not move like it should and it will be hard to cast!
– First layer of bucktail is cut from top part of Bucktail where it’s not as hollow and will not flare out as much when tied in.
– Second layer is cut from bottom of the tail where the hairs are more hollow but is tied in with the tips pointing back
– Third layer is Bucktail that is cut from bottom of the tail and is tied in reverse style
– Back pair of sadle hackles should be just slightly longer than the Nayat tail, and the flash on top of that just slightly longer than the feathers. This creates a nice tapered effect to the tail.

Have fun!

The seasons started

I actually caught my first fish on the seventh of january this year, that’s some kind of record! But then winter hit us finally with cold weather, sno and icing of the bays. But that lasted only just over a month and now most of my home waters are ice free so yesterday me and my oldest son was out again and we both caught small pikes in shallow waters. We also saw about 15-20 pikes on shallow waters, I estimated the biggest ones to be somewhere around 15-16 lbs! I don’t know if the breaking of the ice is some kind of signal for the pike to start migrating to shallow waters for spawning perhaps because there should be so many fish in shallow waters otherwise. There are still about 2 months until spawning should be at its peak!

It’s funny, every time I go out I usually start with trying a few new flies then perhaps something proven like green and gold and then if nothing works I put on red and white. And it’s remarkable how often that color get the fish going!

My first flytying video

Here it is, my first not so very professional fly tying video. Very much inspired by the guys at Fly fishing the ozarks and Brian Wise’s fly tying videos there, just not as good as theirs! Anyway, here’s The wild thing pike fly for you, hope you’ll enjoy it!

A little bit about the fly itself. At a first glance it looks like an obvious re-take on the classic Rac zonker pike and you can say it is but it did actually come to life as a try to upsizing one of my favourite large streamers for trout; the Red rocket from Micke Schmidt. Having met Mike a couple of times I gotta say that he’s one of the most creative and focused fly tyers I have had to privilige to watch tie. In the process of upsizing his pattern I went about and replaced every singel material from the original which probably makes this more of its own pattern than a variant of Mike’s orginial. But I still want to give credit to him for the inspiration!

2014 – the year of the Pike!

I described previously briefly on the season that I have behind me and the frustration I’ve had with the fact that despite having way more fishing days this season and despite the fact that I’ve never caught so many pike on the fly during one season (one reason of course being due to the increase in fishing days) I still haven’t got a single fish close to the magic 10 kg mark.

So with that in mind I have decided to go on a mission. To start a campaign that won’t stop until I have reached my goal. 2014 is the year I turn 40 years old. And I won’t stand for not having caught a +10 kg pike on the fly before I turn forty!

I will fish more days, more waters and with more flies than ever before. I will travel to where ever I need to go. Fish hard rain, hard wind, snow, hailstorms or tsunamis. I will not stop for anything to reach my goal.  My call now goes out to all my pike fly fishing friends all over Sweden. Who will help me reach my goal of catching my dream fish on a fly next season? Who will scribe his or her name in the history books by guiding me to my trophy pike? Who will join me in my quest for glory, massive amounts of sharp teeth and immortality? Who will let me in to their most secret “big pike spots” just to see me fulfill my life long dream?

That’s right, I hereby declare 2014 to be the Year of the pike. And the hunt for that big pike starts NOW!

Foxy Tails pro team

One thing that has happen during 2013 is that I deepened my cooperation with the good people of Foxy tails. For you who don’t know they are a UK based company that stocks mainly some of the best natural fly tying material there is. Having been focused on Salmon and sea trout fly tying they wanted to move more into Predator fly tying and I came in this past summer to help them promote some of their great stuff.

I would never promote something that I don’t like myself or have no use for and to be honest since I got my first Foxy tails materials every single pike fly of mine has had at least one material from Foxy tails, it’s that good. They also brought a new material to my attention that has quickly become my favorite material for my pike flies; Nayat hairs!

Here’s a few of my promotion flies for Foxy tails from these past months, all of these have also been fished with and every single one has caught fish too. So they might be used for promotion but they are all fishing flies that work great for me!

Hello, you missed me?

Okay, I am sorry. I’ve had long spells before where I have been quite lousy at updating this blog but this is probably an all time high. It is however not a coincidence that my latest blogpost was just a few weeks before the fishing season started for real here, because I have never fished as much as I have this year and 95% of my fishing has been in my home waters chasing that elusive brackish water Pikes that patrol the shoreline of the Baltic sea.

Even though there might be a few days left to fish in this season it is really coming to an end. And to summarize it has been both a good and a frustrating season. It’s been good because I have never caught so many pike during one season as I have this year, I have also gotten the opportunity to fish another water more frequently together with a friend who has a boat on a completely different spot than I have, which has allowed me to go to spots I couldn’t with my little boat.

It’s been frustrating due to the fact that despite all my efforts and all my days out I still have nothing really big to show for it. I’ve been in contact with a few really big ones, but not close to as many as last season where I got into a really bad period where I lost many 5-6 fish that all of them would have broken my current personal best pike on the fly. But I’ve still learned new things this season that I am gonna take with me into the next one that will improve me. I am well aware also that where I fish are not regarded big-pike area, it is the very outskirts of the worlds biggest archipelago and very elusive. But I have a goal and a dream and I will pursuit it.

I am gonna try and post more regularly from now on, especially now that we move into winter and there won’t be as much fishing. Here’s a few photos of me and some friends of mine from this past season for now, see you soon!

BFF

I’ve never been a huge fan of Big Fly Fibers but after having seen two really cool tying videos from Andy Weiss and Daniel Dietrich Holm the other days I decided to dust off a few packs of the tying materials and give it a try again. Using a reversed tie white bucktail to tie on I’ve then used white BFF, red whiting bird fur and red goat hair as well as pearl flash, red fin rac hairs and red Senyo’s laser dub. And some grizzly sadle feathers in there too! 😀

A little bit of everything = something really good?

Sometimes you end up just borrowing a little bit of everything from different patterns that you feel have been successful and it end up to look better than you imagined it from the start! This is a good example of that, I’ve used a little polar bony as a back bone, pearl flash, white bucktail, chartreuese soft Bird fur feathers, white and chartreuse Fin racoon hair and more! A big head with a lot of possibilities to push waters, really soft and moving bird fur feathers ties both inward and splayed out will add a lot of fluttering movment bot on retrieve and when stopped. The rac hair will add extra movement in the head with its vibrating abilities and of course the color combo of white and chartreuse is THE most successful spring color (and quite a good autumn color too)! The size is about 25 cm (10 inches) which is also kind of perfect when you look for unweighted flies with a lot of “self movement” so to speak, i.e. flies that when stopped will keep pulsating and flutter instead of being actively fished with jigging movememt. Bucktail as a support also have the effect where it can make the fly go out to the side when hard retrieved. Something that is extra special when you tie them articulated, which I feel I really need to do!

Oh well, as you guess I am rather please with how this one looks! 😀

Musky inspired

There’s suprinsingly few flies for pike you see that look to american flies for Musky. Sure there’s bits and pieces like reversed bucktail being used, but that’s more of a saltwater hollow fley Bob Popovich style. So I’ve been starting to look around a bit on Musky patterns, there aren’t that many original patterns to be found online, but there’s a few names that come up where ever you go looking. One is Brad Bohen and his patterns The Buford and the Hang time. So last night I decided to try me a little variant of the Buford pattern.

It’s a very classic musky pattern featuring bucktail and sadle feathers as its main materials. I didn’t have the right colors of Sadle feathers so I ended up using barred Schlappen feathers instead.

The idea is to fish it on an intermediate or faster sinking line to draw in under the surface and to have the big buctail head make all sorts of “noise” under the water and make it skip irregularly from side to side and up and down.

Hook: Partridge Ultimate predator X 6/0
Thread: Veevus 6/0
Tails: Two yellow barred schlappen feathers and Sybai tinsel hair
Body: Bucktail, orange and yellow barred schlappen and Sybai tinsel hair
Head: Butt end of bucktail, spun and clipped down.

I don’t pack the head very hard, and I don’t clip it down very neat either, just like on the original Brad Bohen fly, I don’t want it to be super buoyant, my intermediate line  need to be able to get it down a bit.

Juice em up!

Articulated pike fly with a trick I learned from Steve Silverio to use the plastic inside cap from a juice pack. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle!