We are a relatively young hook brand. Ever since Ahrex was just an idea, one of our most important goals were to build a selection of hooks to allow you, the user, to choose the right hook for your particular fishing, from our selection. We’re not done designing hooks – we’re still getting ideas and there are still hooks we want to add to our range, even though we have millions (literally) of hooks in storage.
Imagine an English gentleman and his wife, in a beautiful, big Jaguar with two 17’ Falcon split cane fly rods strapped to the roof, driving down a small access road to a majestic, Norwegian river and you have an image of inventor of what is one of the most succesful flies of the 20th century.
Mathias “Tuben” Ibsen with the stuff we have been dreaming for… Silvershining salmon from the opening day of the salmon rivers.
I’m writing this on Thursday April 9th, which means that there is exactly one week until the opening of the Danish salmon season. By the time you read this, there are only six days. I’ve mentioned this before, but we’ve had the wettest winter since we began recording weather data in the middle of the 19th century, so I’m quite convinced that there are plenty of salmon in the rivers.
With the Covid-19 virus spread all around the globe, and many countries in different states of lock-down, some even under curfue, these are indeed strange times. In Denmark most workplaces are either shut down or kept running with a minimum of personnel. We are still here at Ahrex HQ – and we are well under government recommendations in terms of number of people in one location and we have plenty of space between us.
At his time of the year the trophy for the coastal flyfisher is silver-coloured.
Over 20 years ago, I was visiting a small fly shop here in Denmark called “Fugl & Fjer Fluebinding”. Directly translated that means Bird and Feather Flytying. The shop was run by my good friend, Jens Pilgaard, and was essentially a specialty shop for materials for classic salmon flies. I didn’t tie classic salmon flies back then, but Jens’ shop was always a treat to visit, because one would always stumble over something new or strange to tie onto a hook.
It might sound a bit pretentious for a company as young as Ahrex to tell it’s story now, but we get a lot of questions on when, how, where, why and who when we’re on shows and from retailers and distributors. And prompted by J. Stockard, I decided to ask Søren and Morten some of these questions and let them tell the story.
Believe it or not, this weekend’s it’s time for the British Fly Fair International again, and we will of course be present.
We are bringing all of our hook models, so if you’re curious about a particular model, here’s an opportunity to see it. Maybe you haven’t seen the Salt-series we released in September 2019? If you fish the salt, either here in Europe or visit tropical destinations, you must come by and see these hooks.
I don’t know how many hooks on the market can be classified as “streamer hooks”, and we often get asked why we have one in our line up when there are so many on the market. And that is of course a valid question, and the only answer is that we had to. We had to have a classic streamer hook – we couldn’t be a serious hook brand of we hadn’t.
Continue reading “Streamers, bucktails and Mickey Finn – part II”
I don’t know how many hooks on the market can be classified as “streamer hooks”, and we often get asked why we have one in our line up when there are so many on the market. And that is of course a valid question, and the only answer is that we had to. We had to have a classic streamer hook – we couldn’t be a serious hook brand of we hadn’t.
It can come as no surprise that at Ahrex, we like hooks. In fact we like them so much that we’ve made it our livelihood. Which of course is made possible by the fact that you basically need a hook to land a fish on a rod (apart maybe from a garfish, which you can actually land with a piece of yarn, but that’s a different story).
