I started out with dryfly.me 1.april last year, and it has now been up and running for just over 18 months, today marks a milestone here: this is the 300th post that I have posted so far!

The plan behind starting this blog up was to explore flytying and flyfishing even more for my own part, I had done some tying before, but starting up this blog have driven me to look at different styles, patterns and new areas that all are a part of what flytying is all about. I have posted most of what I have tied up without much filter – the part of putting these pictures up here in the public have driven me to look at the why and how it should be done, and that have learned me a lot!

This has been a learning journey for me, and it will continue to be so! Maybe I’ll get into pike flies, big saltwater flies for tropics, ultrarealistic tying, who knows? What I like is to explore all parts of this hobby to become better at what I like to do: tying and fishing!

What’s next?

I have explored a lot when it comes to flytying the last year, and I will continue to post patterns and fishing trips here, but I would like to start looking more into details on things now that I have gotten to a comfortable level of tying: SBS on patterns, a deeper look into materials and maybe look more at rodbuilding and other parts of what flytying/flyfishing is all about.

The last 18 months

With this beeing the 300th post here on dryfly.me I have gone through all 60 pages and looked at what I have done in the past.

My first post: Horizontal Midge, I had just got the domain and a brand new macro camera, this was the (rushed) start of it all.

I then got into looking at material (this was a plan from the start): thread, dubbing and vinyl rib. I was still practicing dryfly with CDC&Deer that really don’t look that good today, but it was a part of learning it:

These Aurivilli was the start of getting something right:

At this time I did a lot of tiny flies down to #32

First attempt at a wetfly (and I started looking at different background colors):

Then in june 2013 my favourite dryfly pattern appeared, and I did a SBS on it

And I went out and got some fish with it. Introduced planet.dryfly.me that still haven’t gotten that much traffic, but I think is a really good place to catch  up on what’s going on with flyfishing around the world. I played around with vinyl-rib nymph

and got some nice trout

in the sunset

By august I did another SBS on the hatching caddis

And suddenly it was september and I got my first seatrout on fly and did a SBS on a baitfish

Did my first married wing fly:

Explored some new lakes around Oslo

It was now getting into winter and I started tying up many different styles, even some really big #2/0 streamers (didn’t leave a stone unturned when it came to exploring new stuff)

At this time I got my first patch of arctic fox and tied up some streamers

but I got some good dries tied as well

In december I started looking at tube fly, and tied up my first one:

this escalated over the winter and I got really into tying large arctic fox/temple dog tube flies for salmon, exploring sunray shadow, more sunray shadows, my sunray solstice, red-tag tube,

Got into PT in the new year

Made some troll-looking emergers

Did some buzzers

and some more bead midges

at this point I did a lot of tubes, and this is still one of my favourites:

I also explored the salmon bomber on tube, making a lot of mess in my tying room:

We are now in february this year and I made some red-tag wet flies that I got my pb grayling on later this year

I built my first rod

And at this time I had my big-tube patterns going in a good direction:

And I started filling up my barbless box with CDC&Deer:

In march I partcipated in a caenis swap with some small #30:

And went back to do some templedog comet on different hooks and tube:

I got my first Cod on fly the 30th of march:

Exploited a dustbroom to get some parachutes:

The first shrimp:

Got some very nice dries going:

that have a great profile:

It was now june, and I tied up a lot for the big north-norway trip I had this summer:

Around this time I also experimented with my first classic salmon:

The first vaskebjørn appeared in August (it was a lot of seatrout flies this autumn):

Did some awsome looking doubles:

Before I started tying up for my autumn trip with a lot of dry barbless:

At the end of August I also tied up my first couple of Bergmans:

Then it was time to try out salmon on the fly for the first time, but all I got was this pike:

But Rena delivered in September, and I got a grayling that crossed the 1kg mark:

Then it was back to Vaskebjørn and more variations of the Magnus:

Some rabbit skins came my way that I’m starting to use, and lately I have done some spey style

some big carrie-stevens like streamers

and finally some more Magnus

As you can see it has been a long 18 months where I have explored a lot of different styles and sizes, it has been great fun, and I’m looking forward to more exploring and weird experiments over the winter and the next years!