Besides the (obvious) obsession for flytying and flytying I have a passion for my day-job as a web-developer: backend systems, metadata and data-driven application development. I have earlier made a database for norwegian hiphop albums and when I this winter sat down to figure out my next rod: a #5 weight for going after trout here in Norway I discovered that besides the obvious opinions about rods and what you should get, there were no good databases and overviews of the different #5 rods out there!

There are some sites out there, but a lot of them are not updated, and they didn’t have the features I wanted to compare and search for rods! So: I found out that the domain flyrods.org was available and started developing a new site to collect all the information about all the companies and rods I could!

Now: the site I’m launching today don’t have all the companies out there, neither does it have all the rods, but so far I’ve collected 2300+ rods and put the information up there to be browsed and searched through. I wanted to get the site up and running as soon as possible so that I could get some feedback from people that are interested in this kind of information (and you know that a lot of flyfishers can be obsessed about numbers and statistics!).

The main feature of the site will be the search where you can search up companies/length/weight and then go on to compare them side-by-side to see how different rods. The search engine is now in its first version, but I’m interested in feedback on how it works and maybe how it can be improved. The important work up until now have been to gather information, then I’ll continue to improve the site.

All the information is gathered from the rod companies web sites, this means that the site now mainly consists of current rods, and not earlier editions or companies that don’t exist any more. This is information I would love to get my hands on so that I can get it up there together with the rods that are available! I’m currently going over the rods and companies to start adding videos/links to reviews and images, but for this I also need input from the companies that produces these rods (please contact me if you produce rods and can provide images!)

Again: this is the first version, there are companies missing and the site might have some problems here or there, but do let me know if you find anything missing or if something doesn’t work!

http://flyrods.org

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!