Category: Salmon fly

Feathers galore

Brown Bodied Parachute by Jan de Haas-03

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.

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Spey-i-fication

Laksehale

What defines a Spey fly? Two distinct features – the low brown mallard wing and the long, flowing hackles, often from a heron. So can you justify adding the “Spey” in from of a fly, which you modify using a long, flowing hackle rather than a more traditional cock- or hen hackle found on most traditional wet flies? And what if the long hackle isn’t even a heron hackle? I’ll steer clear of that discussion for now.

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Sunray Shadow

Otterkulpen

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.

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Danish Salmon Opening

Lakzz

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.

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Salmon Fly Tradition

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Photocredit: The Flyfishing Nation

At the time of writing this, there is exactly two weeks until the Danish salmon rivers open on April 16th and naturally, my mind has been drifting towards salmon flies. This blog will be about salmon flies and so will the next with some recommendations on good flies for Danish salmon. But for now, I’m not thinking so much about flies for Danish salmon in particular, more about salmon fly traditions.

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