New line,fly tying and fishing

Thought I could share some experiences of my "new" fly line Airflo Elbi pike "9 float/int.
Bought this line some months ago from https://smartlures.nl  but not until yesterday I really fished with it.
Haven't scale the weight but head lenght is 28.5 ft (8.5 m)

Reason why it hasn't been used is simply that I have fished some deeper areas lately but last Sunday we fished a large shallow area in middle of reeds and after I failed with my int.Sniper I decided to take time to try out this new line.
First thing I noticed was the color,a bright red running line with a dark olive head (I thought it was brown).I like contrasts between the head and running line for some reason.
Next thing I noticed was how tangled the line was,actually noticed same thing on my Airflo Sniper line too,still tried to do some casts but it was a big pain in the ass so I went out paddling and towing the line after me,boy it was really coiled but managed to get it straight and in no time it was ready for a new test.

Used a Vision Big Mama  8,4 ft #9 weight and right from the first cast I really liked it even if it felt a bit heavy.
Think the line felt slippery but not in fingers but in line guides yes,you could easily cast 15-20 meters with barely no effort at all which is good,it's long cast enough and fishing 10-12 hours without much effort on casts ain't anything but good.

Not much more I can say at the moment after only one day fishing but it felt really good,so good it will have a place on one of my reels in future too.

                                                             Fly tying.

Still I'm in no need for a single new fly but for the love to genre I still tie a fly now and then and of course I tie substitutes for the chewed ones.

Earlier this year I tied a Hollow fleye in pretty simple colors and I had a strong feeling it will work and yes it has worked,it has worked so well I wanted to tie a slightly bigger version of it.
The "original" tie lokked like this:

Have landed a good amount of pikes on this one this season already.
Tied the new one on a Sakuma 546 6/0 just like the original but added a wire extension in Popovics style to get a bigger fly built.

I'm very happy with the result.

Have earlier tied the extension on a S sized tube but decided to go on a wire this time,not easy but worth the effort imo.

Extension on tube.

Could not decide should I tie it in my hands or in vise so it was a bit of both but who cares,only result is important.

After finishing the extension it feel almost easy to continue with attaching it to the hook shank and tie on it.

And surprisingly I had to tie one more....

And also fished last weekend or on Sat to be exact.
Had a nice day out with my team mate from Wildyfishing Finland.

Full story at  http://wildyfishingfinland.blogspot.fi/2016/05/early-birds-get-wormsfishing-may-28-2016.html

Blog news.

Here's a link to our new team blog site,first reports are written.

http://wildyfishingfinland.blogspot.fi/?zx=cd8d8f798fe82284

Some fly tying.

Haven't tied flies for a while and not even had any plans to do so but after my herring pattern worked so well and get really hammered I just had to take a seat behind the vise and tie up a new one.
Thought I could also show up rest of my flies I haven't post here.

First in line here's some synthetic tube flies tied with Jerkbaitmanias Pike Skinz.

Got more of them in different colors but wanted to show you those in which I believe most.
Durable,good bright colors,they should work.

Also tied couple more of flies with a extension,pretty much inspired of Bob Popovics "Beast"

Big size good profile and surprisingly easy to cast,I really like them.

Shape shifters worked very well for me last season and can't see any reason why they wouldn't do so even this season.
Haven't tied many new because I got LOTS of them still but...always good to at least practice.

Here's a fly,same head but with two different "tails"

Of all Shape shifters one all time favorite combination is this simple color combo,hope and believe it will deliver something.

A pattern I learned from Niklaus Bauers tying course was the "Black bream" which I have modified slightly to suit my fishing better has turned out in different color combos.

Here's couple of them,really big flies,with a wiggle tail combined to them the measure a massive 35 cm,have already landed fishes on them,not the easiest to cast but feel I wanna have couple of them in my boxes.
Not that I would have to but wanted to tie some "therapy flies" too,in this case it mean some pretty ordinary Decievers,made a wiggle tail attachment to some of them too.

This type of flies are definitely my favorites,I love to tie them,their easy to cast and catch well.

Gosh,there was more than I remember,no wonder why my crate looks like this when I'm heading out,need to do some clearing....

That's ridiculous to be honest,I could get along with just one box,last weekend I used less than 25 flies on two days fishing.

Anyway,I was about to write about the Herring pattern...
As usually I changed some things after I gave it a long thought.Tied the extension in "Popovics" way on a 100 lb mono line instead of a S sized tub,also made the head of two bunches of bucktail instead of one.
Biggest change is probably the hook,the old one is tied on a Varivas big mouth 5/0 and the new one is tied on a Varivas big mouth EXTRA 5/0 which is a bit heavier and made of thicker goods which in turn hopefully gives more durability.
The fly feel much lighter and is kinda airy too,hopefully it works as well as the first one.

They became pretty much similar in look,Can't wait to get out on weekend to test this one.

Video from last weekend fishing camp.

Made a video clip from last weekend,Thank you guys for all the material,especially to Alex "the drone" Lehtinen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hihXrCXeqPs

Fishing camp May 13-15 2016

A fishy weekend left behind and time to sum up something about it.
Nine guys,three of them fished from a kayak,Janne from a Wilderness systems Commander 140 and newest team member Bruce from his brand new Ride 135 and I fished from my ATAK 140.

I started to fish on Friday afternoon and as I expected fishing was pretty good in amount of fishes but no big guns landed,it was still fun when you had hits on your flies with short intervals.
Landed six fishes in less than an hour.
Thought that was enough and started to paddle to the camp for some rest,I knew next day was going to be long and though.
I had to paddle against the wind but it wasn't any kind of a problem with this kayak,it tracks good and you can get a good speed with very light effort.
Fished two spots on my way too and landed two fishes too.

Have noticed that I love my surroundings more and more every day I'm out,of course I love fishing too,just paying more attention to surroundings has come to stay.
Took this pic of the sunset just before arriving to our camp.

The clock was pretty much so it wasn't much more to  do than get something to eat before I laid my head on the pillow and felt asleep,I use to sleep so damn well out here....

Woke up early next morning  and took a short walk at the shore before breakfast and just in time to capture the sunrise which I could not ignore without taking a pic of it.

Took me a quick breakfast and while eating I got a message from Bruce "30 minutes " so immediately after breakfast I paddled to the shore were we shortly made up plans for the daily fishing,weather was nice so far with a light breeze and even the sun came out behind the clouds every now and then.

Making plans.

 We went out to our first planned spot which wasn't far away and while fishing we saw rest of the guys heading out,a fleet,A big boat towing a smaller boat which in turn towing a kayak,we didn't hurry after them because we had some nice spots to fish before we was to catch them up.

We landed some fishes on our way to the rest of the gang and not long before we were all side by side drinking some coffee and talking.

This was cool,3/6 of the Wilderness systems team,Janne in his Commander 140,Bruce in his Ride 135 and me in my ATAK 140 started to hammer a long shallow reed bank and not long before Janne got some action in form of a decent angry fish.

 
At some point I changed my fly to some kind of a Herring imitation and decided to fish a big shallow area which hasn't been so specially good before but now I landed five pikes on two short stops,of these five fishes one was my biggest on the whole weekend.

Only jack size still but fun with so much action.
That Herring pattern I used was my best fly with good margins,landed a lot of pikes with it.
This is the fly I'm talkin about.

Even after couple of fishes it was still going strong...

Not sure how many pikes I landed with it but going thru that razoblade mangle over and over again can kill anything.
At some point I had no choice but to change fly and put this one to retirement but it will surely go to my "Wall of  fame" Good job done

Chewed.

Anyway,fishing was good,every guy landed fishes,Bruce got his Ride 135 officially "slimed" also think everyone had fun and even if  weather wasn't best possible it could have been much worse.

Officially slimed

A total amount of maybe 80-90 pikes were landed all of them C&R,good food and good friends,that's what makes these kinda events worth to wait for.

Wilderness systems team 3/6  taking a break

End of day two.

Got some video material of my own and waiting for some footage from the other guys too and will edit a video of this weekend too so stay tuned.