Today marks the official release of a brand new series of hooks that we have chosen to call XO. XO has plenty of meanings in today’s world. Our younger readers will relate it to “hugs and kisses” in text messages while our slightly, how should I put it, more seasoned customers might tend to connect it with cognac, where it signifies that a cognac has been aged for at least six years in oak barrels. We – however – use the term differently, as an abbreviation for Cross Over.
It’s autumn, October, and sea trout this time of year can be very picky and difficult to catch. Fishing can be frustrating, since the fish will often hang around for a long time – often completely uninterested in any offerrings.
You may have spotted these news on Facebook and Instagram already. If not – today is the official release of a new dry fly hook in the FW-series: the 504/505 Short Shank Dry Fly Hook.
Continue reading “Ahrex FW 504/504 Short Shank Dry Fly Hook”
If the fish are playing tricky, the best approach is sometimes to do something totally different (and often something that all the other flyfishers don’t do). And sometimes a big, high floating dry is the right way forward.
The ultimate game bird for fly tying? Maybe not, but the different feathers from a partridge are amongst the most versatile for nymphs, flymphs, wet flies, spiders and soft hackles. Soft pulsating hackles with an attractive marking that offers plenty of life and movement to the fly.
Brown Bodied Parachute tied by Jan de Haas.
We’re fly fishers and fly tiers – that’s why me make fly hooks. Being fly tiers we love quality fly tying materials (almost) as much as we love quality fly hooks. There are so many high quality materials available today that it’s hard to believe – natural materials, synthetics, furs, hairs, silicone products, rubber. But in some way the quintessential fly tying material is the feather. The simplest of modern dry flies – from the Halford-era consists on a tail of hackle fibres, a dubbed body and a front hackle. Even the very first fly in written sources mentions the use of feathers.
The trout season is coming to end end, at least if your’re a topwater/dry fly fisherman and many rivers and lakes close down for the winter. But it’s still September and although there are very few mayflies hatching now, there’s still some caddis, but also an abundance of terrestrials – or land insects. They are at their prime now.
The Butcher, proberbly the best known classic wet fly – tied by Håkan Karsnäser.
When fly tiers and fly fishers think about “mallard wings”, I suppose that most of us have the image of a classic spey fly with its low set roof shaped wing of the beautiful (and impossible) brown- and black speckled feathers from a mallard’s wing.
Two words for the same insect – an insect that is quite important to the trout- and grayling fisherman. In fact probably even more important than the mayflies since there are so many more species of caddis than there are mayflies. Like the mayflies they are important both as nymphs, emergers and adults and imitations are plentyful.
On southern Fyn (the isle in the middle of Denmark, which happens to have some extraordinarily good sea trout fishing) you’ll find a rarity – at least in Denmark. No, it is in fact something as ordinary as a fishing lodge. There plenty of fishing lodges around the world, and yet, Denmark Fishing Lodge on the edge of Helnæs Bay on Fyn was the first, full-service fishing lodge in Denmark.
