Sorting equipments part one

Even if there has been snowfalls here in southern Finland it melting away pretty fast right now so I´ll set my sights to middle of May when there should be a serious chance to get on the water and do some serious bisnes.
I have usually waited untill the spawning is over but I´m not sure if I can wait so long this year.
But instead of the last minute planning of rods,reels,lines ETC,ETC....I have started to sort out everything now because I really hate to do my hobbies in hurry.

Because I also do some spincasting and jerkbait fishing it make the whole thing little more complicated,Anyway Im almost finished and some results:

For spincasting I´ll have two choises:
-Shakespeare Trion 7,6 feet lureweight 20-60g+Daiwa Coastal reel with a sparepool.
Lines to the spools will be Power Pro 0.19 and 0.28.

Second choice will be a:
-Shakespeare Ambidex titanium plus 7,6 feet lureweight 20-60g+Shimano Cruxis reel.
The line to this will be Power Pro 0.32.

For jerkbaitfishing I will choose a Strike Pro Contact 6,8 feet,lureweight
up to 180g+Shimano Calcutta 200 GTB reel.
The line will be Power pro 0.36 or 0.41,I havent decided yet.

I´ll have some old rods and reels in reserve if something will break but these are my first choice and for pikefishing.









And the next step will be to sort out my flyfish equipments from:
-Two #9 rods (Vision,Hardy)
-Two reels+ 6 sparepools
-Nine lines in class 9.

One ready set is my Guideline ACT in weightclass 8+Guideline Reelmaster reel and my choice for a line will be Guideline Pike #8.

The second ready set is my old reliable Orvis Clearwater rod + Orvis Battenkill LA
reel in class 6 with a guideline bullet line.

And what would this blog be without showing some new flies,model Regret.
These will propably be my last Regrets for some time,I have study flash tying for sometime now and think i will start with some practice this weekend.





And finally,here´s one who dont give a shit if I have to tie my flies without a chair

nag,nag,nag.....

Okay,the weekend came,was and went.And as usual it was all too short and also as usual my plans to prepare my reels rods and lines for the opener was ruined but as I look out from the window and see the god damn fuckin snow falling down I guess it doesnt matter for now.....SHIIIIIIITTTTT !!!!!
Last year I made my first trip in middle of march to central Finland.
The first REAL trip was 8-9 may when I was targeting pike.Looking at the ice conditions now it´s going to be a though game if I want to make my season opener at same date.
For the next year I´ll just have to buy some icefishing equipments,this fuckin snow and ice is really makin me loose my mind.
I´m so pissed off i could bite my pinkie off me.

But as usual.....what the hell can I do about it?Thats right,nothing.
Nothing else but to take a seat behind my vice,have a cup of coffee,a glass of some good and expensive cognac,tie some flies with no hurry.Examine your flies and find new models,materials,colour combos etc,etc...

The winter is absolutly not funny but always try to think that things could be worse,much worse.

And finally after my complaining moment I think it´s time to introduce my weekend flies:

Dubbing brush tests part II

So,now I have made some tests with different materials and I ´ll have a strong feeling that this will be a usefull tool,BUT....Need to handle these issues first:
-Spinning the brush.This is the biggest issue right now,the dubbing tool doesnt work in a way that I want.Got allready a plan to solve it.
-The hooks are in different position to each other.This is a easy problem to solve,changin the hooks place and it should be a done case.

Anyway,I think that after some practice with the amount of different materials the rest of all issues will be solved.
here is a couple of photos of brushes done with different materials.
Lets start with Marabou:



And the second one,a not so ususal combo,Icelandic sheep and slinky,added some black flash:



They look more like the beast rather then beauty but after some practice I think it will turn around.

Testing the dubbing brush machine.

Even if it´s too early to say that this machine works I want to share my first test experiences with you.
First of all I use a dubbing tool(not sure about it´s English name)to spin the brush with.



Attach the wire to the hook on the tool and take it over the "table" behind the other hook.



Then add some material,in this case Ice wing with a dash of something pink...



Then pull the wire over the materials and fasten it on the hook of the tool.



Then spin carefully 4-5 times the tool and after that move the "table" and after that spin again.



At least with Ice wing it´s very important to remember to sometime use the tying needle or the scissors to solve the material,otherwise you´ll have a Ice wing worm,not a brush.



Then it´s a open highway....just spin some time(remember to solve the material at times)and cut the wire near both hooks and.....you´ll have a complete dubbing brush.



Even if there´s some issues Ithat needs to be solved this test was very promising and I will still do some more tests with Marabou,Flashbou ETC.ETC.....
Stay tuned.....Cheers.

Some woodwork.

Yesterday when I was tying My Regret in a new style all started because I runned out of dubbing brushes so its time to tie some new ones,but because I have tied my dubbing brushes here and there I decided to make it a little bit easier to me.

I called my brother who works as a teacher and asked if I could use the woodwork class and after a yes I spend a while at his school and made me a almost professional dubbing brush machine

I havent test it yet but I´ve planned this in my mind for some time now so I´ll think this one will work.
Soooo,here it is my dubbing brush machine:

Weekend disaster and fly tying.

Oh no....A slight setback in weather conditions,about 2 inches snow at the weekend.
Well,to be honest the whole weekend was a disaster starting with saturday wich was a flagging day here in Finland,woke up 3.30am and starting to flag 04.00.

4 hours and 54 flags later went home with aching feets and arms,and just when I was suppose to take a nap the snow started to fall.
Went back to work at 3.30pm,it took over 5 hours to collect all the 54 flags and after that I started to plow some snow but because the snow just kept falling I founded it useless to go on anymore on saturday.

This morning I woke up by my alarm clock at 4.30am and let me tell you I felt slightly PISSED OFF while driving to work....on a sunday.
So plowed rest of the snow and sanding,it took me 12 hours before I was ready so you can understand I dont have more then two new flies to show.

The first one is coloured traditionally orange/black.Added some wider flash wich I regret a bit,I like the thinner more.Hopefully it bother just me



Then to the other one,I still call it to regret pattern even if it´s tied in a different way then the others.
The Big fly fibre is still there but instead of a dubbing brush I tied some Ice wing fiber straight on the hook.



And it looks like this,at some flies I feel it might look better.



And more diffrences is 3 bunches of Ginger coloured Bucktail and now finally I remenbered to add 4 Microbarbs and due to the olive coloured Raccoon I decided to add more flash on this fly.
Also added some red Artic fox and steelgray Polar fiber to the head.

With all these changes this Regret looks like this:



Sorry bout the bad quality of the photo,I´m jut too tired to focus right now.
Right now I need some sleep and hopefully Be more zippy then now.
This is a weekend I want to forget ASAP

Fill the boxes

The mail man brought me an envelope and I´ll just have to thank the Mistpool store,unbeliveble quick delivery wich I feel very important now when I´m in mood for tying.

Yesterday I tied a can we say traditional red/black combo in Regret pattern.



And now when I get some more of Big fly fibre there will be more of these,at least
orange/black
pink/white
blue/yellow
blue/white
red/white
There´s some ones to start with,got also some special colour combos in my mind.



And with the new colours it was today time for a green nuanced one,here with a dash of grey and white added.



Added also some bronze coloured flash in this,think it´s look good.
After the fly was ready and I examined I felt that some microbarbs would have suited in there nicely ,well maybe in the next one...

Anyway,the first box has been filled up with Regrets and the second is on it´s way.
It feels very good to have a lot of boxes full with flies that you really trust.

No regrets about these Regrets

Still tying this pattern and have to say that I´m very satisfied pleased vith both colours and specially the movement,tried them in my friends bath and in my opinion the movement was awsome,guess I´ll have to try to get a video of it.

Now my expectations raised to heaven,and of course I was forced to order more different colours of Big fly fibre,some Bucktail wich I´m in fact was to a shop and choosed some good pieces so there will be more to come as soon as my materials arrive from my local post office.

Well,the flies....
The first one is a chartreuse/orange combo,even if it might look yellow,yuo can blame my photo shooting skills for that.
And as all exept the first regret is tied on a Fulling mill Scorpio hook size 5/0.



And the second one.....
Actually it´s not looking the way I meant,my plan was to make a simple one coloured white fly with a dash of some blue/pearl nuance but as so many times before in the middle of tying I changed my mind and added some grey Raccoon at the end.
Anyway,I think it look good anyway.



Testing in a simple bath made also my imagination flow a little bit.I could almost see a 45 inches/ 25 lbs pike following my fly
Perhaps after a month or so it might be reality......Cheers.

Go expo fair 2011.

So the first true spring sign Go expo fair is over.I was there workin with my fly fishing club Espoon perhokalastajat.Saturday wasn´t so bad exept my hangover,tied some flies size 10-12 and after hook size 5/0 it wasn´t so easy but after a couple of training flies they looked at least decent.
The aim with this tying was to give people without experience a chance to try tying and fly casting also.
I´ve also met some friends on saturday and here I´m tying a fly with one of them.




On sunday there were more people and I didn´t had time for too many breaks,I tied flies in 3,5 hours without breaks and have to admit that it was tough,at times there was some kind of line-up of people waiting for their turn.



Well later on afternoon I had time to check out the presentation and straight away to test the Vision Big daddy rod and due to the big expections it was a disappointing experience so no deal on that,I like my GT4 more.
At least I bought something,like a new scissors and some tying material,and finally I found the very much-vaunted Optima kevlar line,so bevare Predator line.



And as usual,after the fair the burning for the season opener is almost driving me out of my mind but talked to my friends from Salo and they said the Ice is around 45 cm thick and here near Helsinki the snow conditions hasn´t went much better then on the photos couple of weeks ago so while waiting I´ll guess I´ll just going to tie some more of these Regret flies...

Here´s one with a very fresh Epoxy glued head.

A tutorial to Regret.

Now I have found a pattern exept the replot stinger that I really like and I will call these flies simply to Regret.
I´ve also made a small tutorial of it:

1.First I tie a loop of mono fishing line 0,70 back of the hook.



2.Then a bunch of Big fly fibre.



3.Before step three I´ll make a dubbing brush like this:



4.And after tying it on the hook it should look like this:



5.Now its time for the first bunch of bucktail.The firstone should be a little bit bigger then the second:



6.Then the second one.I don´t use hollow style.



7.This step is not necessary but I use it because I feel it´s easier to tie the next step.Tie some wool yarn on the rest of the shank to get it easier to tie the raccoon strip.




8.Now it´s time for the Raccoon zonkker strip.I use to comb it first to get rid of the wool that lies on the bottom of the strip.



9.After tying the zonkker strip it´s time to whip finnish and do a epoxy head and the fly is ready:



I´m using super glue after every step to secure the tying,think it´s necessary with this pattern,otherwise the pikes will tear it apart

I also use to cut a little bit of the big fly fibre and taper it,and also I use to add some flash.
One thing that I forgot to mention is that I use only quality bucktail to these flies.
And before the season opener you will definetly see more of these flies in different colours,here is to start with:





Well now the time is 11.04 pm and tomorrow will be a tough day at the fair in Helsinki so I´ll have to get some sleep so good night to all of you.