Season just going on....

A phone call to my friend this morning secured that tomorrow I´m travelling to Lovisa to fish for the last time this season,at least with boat. There has been very tough conditions for the last two days with winds over 20 m/s but our always reliable forecasts have promised winds around 2-5 m/s so fishing should be possible. Have also heard of some big catches so my expectations is high and I have a good feeling even if the wind is from between north and west and some snowfalls or heavy rain showers is also on forecast makers wishlist..water temp should be somewhere near 6´c and air temp between 3-8´c. Hopefully I will be able to show you something else than just wiews from the waters were i´m fishing.... here is some new flies tied the last days and they will go to swimming school tomorrow,I´ll have to wait and see what the pikes will do to them.

Some tying.

As I wrote some posts ago I just could not wait until December before tying flies.I feel it made good to have a break in fly tying,now ideas just flowing through my head and the only thing that limit my tying is that most of my materials are still packed away and I´ll take only the materials out witch I need for a specific fly that I have in mind. This one was tied yesterday inspirated by the song Purple rain witch I heard from the radio.

And this one was inspirated by the sunrise from this cold morning,I tried to catch both the feeling and colors on this fly.I´m otherwise happy with it but the blue color could have been a bit lighter but as I said,I´m satisfied with this too.

By the way,when I woke up this morning and opened the curtains and took a look outside I was a bit chocked when I checked the thermometer,-7 degrees celsius and forecasts promising some snow also to southern parts of Finland so...... Enough about cold and snow,I was with my daughter to our local mall and I bought Allt om flugfiske,a Swedish fly fishing magazine and I saw some interesting pike streamers,guess I´ll have to dig in my boxes again :).

Golden oldies.

As many of you who´s reading this blog know I will soon be moving to a new place.Have been busy lately with packing and everything else that has to do with moving. Today I was packing away some summer clothes that I don´t need this year anymore and guess what I found ?..... You might remember some time ago when I told you that I found a box of my oldest flies,I forgot them until today. So now I forgot everything else and started to study my flies instead of packing.Oh god how many nice memories flowing in my head watching these "flies" :). There´s actually much more of them but I´ll show you some that was on top of the box first,there will probably be a part two at sometime in the future. So, here´s some photos taken with my phone because I have already packed my cam away and can´t find it no matter how I try. ENJOY :D

Here´s one where I have used probably used 10 Marabou feathers,remember it was not so easy to cast....

And finally one that at least look like a fly.This one have delivered some fishes,wonder why I have put it away times ago ?

Couldn´t wait longer.

Well,it´s true that I was to tie flies next time in December but.....I could not wait until that so even if I had packed away all my tying materials and tools I digged some materials from my boxes and bags and created this fly called Symphony because blending naturals with synthetics.

Including some Bucktail and Finn-Raccoon zonker for naturals and Big Fly fibre and Body fibre for synthetics. The fly is about 23 cm long and HEY !!!!The whole package is tied around my new hooks Partridge Universal Predator X size 6/0.

This hook has all feature to be my favorite,not too long shaft,big gap,strong but sharp and easy to make barbless with pliers.Have heard some praises,(SIIIIMOOOOONNN :)) Will hopefully be tested before winter.

It´s getting closer,think positive.

What is getting closer? Of course every flyfishers wet day dream called winter,oh thank god for the cold weather and dont forget the snow.At least five months without any fishing.... Do I sound crazy? Probably yes but I´m trying to think positive and turning this case upside down.Now you have five months time when you can meet your friends witch you have almost forgot while chasing for pikes,do something nice with your family/wife/girlfriend ETC.ETC.Tie a couple of boxes full with some awsome flies instead of tying them in a terrible hurry three or four hours before your next trip. Take a look at your fly tying materials,do you got all needed materials in stock,clean up your tying corner,practice your casting skills (my biggest aim). Watch on your or your friends photos from last season. One thing I would love to do is to invite some friends to my place and tie flies together,the problem is that I don´t have too many fly fishing friends But I might have my fly tying evening in a some kinda different way,fingers crossed that it will be. No matter how cold it will be,no matter how much snow will fall down....Deep inside I now there will be the day when I´m able to launch my boat and get out there to lay out my line and say hello to those big mam´s

And finally,I recived a "letter" from Denmark today,more precisely from Sellfish media including a movie called A backyard in nowhere and I have to say it was a movie worth waiting for,I can really recommend it to everyone who loves to flyfish for pike.

More planning

First of all,Congratulations to all fathers on fathers day (not sure if you celebrate it in other countries).I was at work this morning for a couple of hours (flagging) but after some rest I started to pack and put all stuff together but very soon I got tired to do it so pretty soon I started to plan my tying corner to my new home. still a bit over two weeks to D-day. Anyway I found a perfect tying table and a chair to it on internet BUT.....It´s veeeeeery expensive and I´ll just have to convince myself that it´s worth it,not that I couldn´t afford it if it was just that table but I´ll have bought new almost every furniture so I still have to think about it. And after spending some hours at internet I decided to check out my dealers tying assortment and was very happy to find that Partridge CS86X Universal predator hooks has arrived to Finland,ordered immediately me 5 packets of them both 4/0 and 6/0 size,have heard some praise.... Also ordered me some different tying material just in case :).Very often all those most popular tying materials are sold out in winter time,I´m not the only one who tries to tie the winter away :). I have been very active with packing today and it look more likely that I will make one pike session in a couple of weeks.

Plans for winter already.

As I promised in my last post I have one explanation about last weeks humiliation against jerkbaits,just kidding..no explanations but one thing I noticed was that I really need to practice my casting technique in tough weather conditions,this summer has been much of searching for new nice places for the autumn and as you all know so combing new places in hurry is much more effective with spincasting then with flies and I´ll have to admit that I have all to often grabbed my spin rod when the the wind has been troublesome and I´ll have just one or two hours time to fish. At our contest Fly VS Jerk I felt it time by time a little bit frustrating to get my fly out only 10 meters in a troublesome wind only because of bad casting technique. So now when I move to a new place I´ll hope they don´t think that I´m crazy when they see me on a windy day out at some field training my casting technique. It feels a little bit strange to already make plans for the forthcoming winter when I still have a slight chance to make one trip this season

Fly VS Jerk 2011.

Woke up 4.15 am this morning and was at work for a couple of hours,came home and had me some breakfast and watched a stupid movie until I realized that I could do something better instead like write some lines about yesterdays fishing witch seemed to be the last session for this season. Yesterday it was time for me and my brothers Fly VS Jerk final fight for this season and I have to say that my brother took this much more seriously than I.......

I had only one fly rod with me added with one box with flies and just ONE line model slow sink against my brothers 4 rods+reels and and probably 7-8 boxes of different jerkbaits. Well,first of all I want to say that I hate everyone and everything that has to do with weather forecasts. The day before They promise a wind from 4-5 m/s --->well,it was at least 10 m/s.... The wind should have been from south --->well,it was from east..... But it was cloudy,just what they promised. I had a good feeling it could a good day anyway but when we arrived to the shore we noticed the water level was at least -40 cm:s lower than normally.at that moment I knew that it would be difficult to compete against jerkbaits...And so it was. Normally we would have fish only in deeper water but this was a competition so we fished alternately jerk spots and fly spots and we started at a jerk spot. The competition could not have started better for my brother,he landed a small bugger (1.2 kg:s) with his first cast....We fished for 20 minutes and.....well.....no excuses: Fly 0- Jerkbaits 4 (3 fishes and the biggest 1.8 kg:s worth 1 point) We went to the second spot with a black cloud over the flyfishers (me) head but this place was planned for flies to shine: 0.8 meter depth,a lot of water plants so I was optimistic at this stage. While I fished my brother was frustated because with almost every cast he had some weed hooked on his jerkbait and after 10 minutes I had two pikes landed against zero for jerkbaits AND I also had the biggest catch by my first pike 2.9 kg:s,but just before the time was out my brother had one clean run and of course ha landed a fish at that time so the result after the second spot the result was: Fly 3- Jerkbaits 5. So far it could have gone either way But the third spot solved this competition with my blank draw against my brothers 4 pikes including the biggest catch 3.3 kg:s. Not much to tell you about the rest three spots,the result of this seasons final fight ended 5-12 to Jerkbaits including the biggest fish (3.4 kg:s) leaves no room for explanations,except one...but I´ll be back on that later.