The season is here!

I went out to a spot a bit away yesterday.
Initially no activity but as the day went on more and more fish started to rise.
They are escaped rainbow trout from various farms and this one is propably from last year judging by the fins.

The tactic for the evening as this was still water was to look for rising fish, follow their movement and place the nymph in their path.
Landed one, lost three and had another couple of bites.
First rainbow trout of the season, small but makes me glad!

Happy fisherman.

Not the biggest i caught by far, about half a kilo.
Caught on my own Orange Attacker weighted nymph.

Almost all the fish in this bay where this size, maybe a couple of bigger ones.
On a #4 rod with very limited space for back-casts I had to resort to spey style casts and these short casts and constantly rising fish in close proximity to you really made it very exciting!
The skin is prepared for tanning and the meat was sprinkled with thyme, wrapped in tinfoil and baked in smoldering charcoal, it tasted fantastic!

Other then that i've been tying lots of dries lately in real preparation for when i move in a couple of weeks.
I'm going to be seated just by a couple of brown trout streams and with a whole summer ahead of me i'm hoping you and me both will see a lot of those.

Spring is comming

It's been warm the last week and almost all the snow is gone.
Some rain and heavy wind should probably make short work with the ice.
I went to a small river some days ago and it was a proper spring flood, brown raging water!
It'll settle down soon and hopefully the water will rise.

In the meantime i've gotten some new materials for my tying.
Grizzly saddle and epoxy eyes from Taimen.

Here's some new stuff!

Pike fly with trailing feathers and rubber legs.

Spent Danica.
This is a work in progress using deerhair for boyancy and for wings.

For this project i shape the hooks to really look like a dying drake.

Fierce orange EHC with rubber legs.
One of my best grayling flies is the Orange Attacker (pic in the post) and i thought "what the hell, might as well try one as a dry.
You can clearly see the grayling taking an interest!

The East Dalecarlia River.

The Indian Fly.

So. I finaly went down for a try at the pike.
Took the bike a fair distance to a shallow bay i spotted from the train the other day and then looked up on the net.
Got there and realised that it was dry.
And covered with ice as well..
As with all my pike spots.

I've come to realise there's a bit of a problem if you will with my part of the river.
It's deep and hard to get down in to, nothing new there.

The seasonal changes, backed by hydroplants way up the river on the other side of lake Siljan  means that in the early spring the river is really low.
That means the shallow bays of the river are all dried out.
Wich in turn means no vegetation that draws the pike in for spawning.

The main flow of the river is basicly a loose mud bottom and that combined with a strong current means little to no vegetation there either.
Some big rocks and a lot of sunken timber means a fairly good ground for rainbow trout though.

My theory is that the pike will probably not spawn at my usual spots this year but go spawn in the lake.

A sad aspect of the low river is that you can see tons and tons of shoppingcarts and old bikes along with remnants of the timber rafting times lying on the bottom.
Makes me sad to see all the things people just dump in the water thinking it'll just vanish magically...

Anyhow, the pike spots are probably good in the summer when the vegetation is back and i'm not here anymore.
For now there's no pike fishing to be done.
Hopefully the water will keep warming up to at least give me some good rainbow fishing before i move on to new waters and new adventures!
There was a tiny hatch two days ago of some small mayfly but not nearly enough to get the fish up from the depths.

Lets hope for spring!

The spring is comming

The winter is comming to an end.
At least i can see the dawn of spring comming up.

The ice is still lying on the lakes but the river is open and the rainbow trout are starting their runs to spawn and i'm hoping for a couple of spring rainbows.

On top of that i'm really looking forward to when the ice is letting its grip go on the small shallow bays and the pike is moving up into the warm water to spawn.

I've been planning a trip together with my father and uncle to go to Åland, home to some of the biggest pike in Europe were we'll fish in the archipelago,mainly from boat but i'll do some wading as well.
They'll fish lures and i'll fish fly.
But i'll be damned if i can't get my dad to try his luck on pike on the fly.

Better start tying some pike-candy!

What's new?

Dries for the summer.
Skater Wooly Bugger with foam top.
Hares ear Streaking Caddis.
All time favourite Elk Hair Caddis.

So. What's new?
First of it's February.
We are slowly progressing towards warmth,spring and eventually summer.
The days have gotten longer and a bit warmer and i spent a couple of wonderfull hours down by the river today swinging flies for rainbow trout.
No takers but i couldn't care less, the weather was amazing.

Unfortunatly one of my line-guides are busted and in need of repair and i'm looking in to how to do it,where to get new guides etc.
Got a couple of broken loops on my shooting line and T-17 tip respectivly so i'm gonna take care of those as well.
Mayby i'll upload a little tutorial of my way of making new loops.

And of course there's been some fly-tying!
Mainly new dries for the spring and summer, some for the twohander,some for my smaller rods.
Some of them you can see above.

Lastly there's been an icefishing session with my girlfriend.
Nothing caught, we tried for rainbow trout angling with shrimp.
They are there in the lake but they are very spaced.
I thought we'd catch some perch at least but no luck there either.
Ahh well...

Happy couple.
Notice the ice dubbs,very important to stay safe on the ice.

What's down there?

Keep on fishing, the spring is almost here!

Flashy fly experiment

The latest fly tying experiment concists of playing around with flash.
Nothing new in that sence, i've tied my pike flies in this manner for a couple of years.
These are on tubes and a bit smaller, targeting rainbow trout and sea trout.

I'm not entirely happy with them.
I have an idea about how they should look but it's not really all the way there.

So this post is basicly to say; I'm alive, this is a work in progress and that not all the flies that we as fishermen tie turn out the way we want to.

Winter in the Valley.

It's been snowing and the temperature have dropped.
It still only looks like the "winter steelhead" videos out there but more is comming.
This weekend promises -10-15'C so it's gonna be nice and balmy out there.
Despite this the river stays open in places due to currents.

The pike rod is on the shelf until spring and i'm putting my hopes in rainbow trout.
There's a couple of farms around here and fish escape from time to time and can grow fairly big, biggest caught last year was about 8 kilos.

To that end I have invested in a T17 skagit tip and tied some big tubes mainly in reds and orange and white and blue along with some classic steelhead patterns such as ESL.

Hopefully that'll do the trick and keep me entertained until the warm rays of spring start melting the ice again.

Fly fishing the year 'round.

Lets kick it off with some contemporary hairwings of bigger proportions.

White and blue. Foxhair,marabou and rooster.

Foxhair and rooster.

Green highlander. Simply because i like the colour shift in the wing.

Monochrome. Fox hair and marabou.

And then some flies tied umbrella style.
Material is evenly spaced around the tube and tied in first forward,then folded back to create volume without adding tons of material.

ESL Variety.

Umbrealla fly. foxhair and rooster.

Only the river knows

The guys from Frontside Fly are at it again,this time with a 80 minute film.

"Only the river knows" promises to be a real treat judging by the trailer.
Nicely filmed in nice settings and with a story, not common in fly fishing movies.

They have been involved in some of the best productions these last years including the Vindel River series.

Here's the trailer: