The Ahrex Hooks salmon fly tied by Håkan Karsnäser
Well, not quite yet. At the time of writing this, it’s a good 24 hours away, but it’s close enough to send you all a sincere Happy New Year from Ahrex HQ. We deeply appreciate the email, the interactions on social media, the tags, the mentions and so on. In short – thank you!
As most of you read this, it will most like be December 24th, Christmas Eve’s Day. Another year is coming to a close, just one more week and we’ll be into 2023. Many have the days between Christmas and New Year off and we at Ahrex hope there will be time for family, fly tying and some fishing for all of you, if weather allows. We’re hoping for a little fishing time our selves.
Fishing for stripers is incredibly popular in the US and we were lucky enough to meet one of the many skilled fishermen who enjoy this species. During the International Fly Tying Symposium in November, we met the talented guide and striper-fisher Joe Cordeiro, whom we persuaded to write a little about his fishing for what can be called the USA’s national fish – the striped bass og just stripers.
Many, if not most, of the Irish salmon-. And sea trout patterns include two or three hackles and no wings. They are tied on all styles of hooks – singles, doubles and trebles and on tubes. They do well tied and fished both small and large and some of the patterns are even popular flies for loch-style fishing for salmon. Their history is a subject for another blog – here I’ll take a look at the basics of tying them. They look deceptively simple, but there are a few pit falls to avoid.
I was invited to tie flies at the annual Black Friday event at Nordic Anglers’ show room last Friday. When I tie flies at events like these, I always focus on tying patterns that don’t take too long. Maybe with a focus on something relevant for the season and if I can fill a vacant space in my own box, even better. I tied a simple sand eel imitation (well, many), gave some away, talked hooks with some of the customers and even took home a few flies.
Did you catch our recently published video with Andreas Andersson? It’s a very detailed instruction on how to tie the famous fly, the Dahlberg Diver. You can tie the fly however detailed you want, but I think it’s safe to say that Andreas’ instruction is among the best and most detailed you can find on YouTube. There’s no need to go into as much detail as Andreas does. Andreas is also among the best with deer hair, so I think it’s also safe to say that no matter how detailed you want to tie your fly, there’s a lot to learn.
We’re back from a hectic weekend in Somerset, NJ. The short story is that we were happy and privileged to be a part of it, we have a great time and it was a pleasure to participate in this legendary and international event.
IFTS is an abbreviation for the International Fly Tying Symposium – an annual show that has been running for 31 years. The show is an institution on the international fly-show-scene and one that has attracted some of the biggest names in the fly tying world. We, Ahrex, are going this year for the first time and we’re excited and proud. Please come and say hello, we’re hanging out at the Regal & Keough stand.
As you know from last week’s blog, a handful of us were at Hökensås Sportsfiske last weekend. Søren, Martin and myself together with some friends, Kirsten, John and Klaus and we had a great time. We enjoyed the fantastic nature reserve that houses the some 25 lakes that Hökensås Sportsfiske manages. And of course the high quality fishery and fish. Stocked lakes, yes, but far from easy. We ended on Sunday with dead calm conditions, which made the fishing quite difficult for everyone (except Håkan and Marcus, of course). I spent the better part of the day, wasting time I’ll never get back trying to catch a trout on a dry fly.
Another rainbow-trout that couldn’t resist the floating Booby fly fished on a sinking line.
There’s nothing new about fishing floating flies on sinking lines and I talked a little about it earlier this month, when I was preparing for the Hökensås Trout Safari, where I am right now, writing this blog entry. Booby flies are very popular on the Hökensås lakes and following a discussion in the car on the way up here from Denmark, I had to write a friend to get a little bit of the history behind the fly.