Flyfishing, flytying and hooks

Traherne: Nepenthian

One author that I hadn’t tied anything from was Traherne: the gaudy patterns, the massive amounts of (rare) feathers and colors everywhere made me stop shy of actually sitting down to tie anything. But: I needed something fresh to tie, something to tie up that I hadn’t done before, and when I stumbled upon a post in Chasing Silver Magazine I figured I was up for the challenge today.

Learning patterns and styles is important, so to get cracking on Traherne I got out a #5/0 iron and got out some substitute feathers to tie a fishing version of the Nepenthian. There are things to pick on, but it is a fly that I’ll use for fishing, so that is the focus when I tie these. Until 2019 though… I’ll get out the splitcane and put it on the end of a long floating line!

Green Highlander – Yasuhiro hook

Yasuhiro Ogasawara is one of the great hookmakers of this time: the profile, bend and barb are all excellent craftmanship. But if you show a range of hooks to anyone it is the gold-leafs on the hook that most people will recognize and immediately associate with Yasuhiro.

A while back Yasuhiro started a Green Highlander project where he ships out two hooks: one for the tyer to tie a GH on, and one for the tyer to keep. I received mine a while back and a few weeks back I finally got the time to sit down and do this GH. I chose to do a rather “fat” version of the GH here – with long body hackle and well picked-out sealsfur in the body. The hook is rather stout, and the dimensions just lent itself to make a fly with a bit more substance in it.

Quite happy with this one: the flow and materials sits in place nicely, the sides are in correct position and I did find toppings that matched. Wished I had a bit better curve on the wing, but that will be for next time.

Jock Scott – Yasuhiro hook

Jock Scott: one of the patterns that got me interested in classic salmon tying in the first place, and one that i have tied a few times since then, but mostly for fishing, and never once for just tying it properly. Now that autumn is on us and I needed to get back to tying again I picked up a Yasuhiro hook that I’ve been saving for a fly like this, got some coffee on started tying this. It has been in the vise for a couple of weeks, slowly getting all the parts together.

The problem with sizes like this, a #6/0, is always finding long enough material, but it came together, and now it’s time for framing.

flypattern.org – John Sand

The initial books that was added to flypattern.org was the old, international known, salmon fly authors: Blacker, Kelson, Francis Francis and others. This coincided with the ASFI 2018, and was a natural starting point for the site.

The plan have always been to digg deeper into authors and flytyers that are known locally and internationally, and to document the patterns that these people are behind. One such author is John Sand (Norway), that together with his son Erling are well known for their patterns and the extended business they built.

Last year I was lucky enough to purchase a box of materials and hooks after a person that tied for the Sand company, among these were 3 hand-written recipe books from the time. At the same time Roy-Tore Gjertsen have been collecting and tying up the old Sand patterns, keeping a translation of them in English. Now there are 92 patterns added to flypattern.org, documenting the old patterns for the future, in addition Roy-Tore have allowed me to use his pictures of some of the patterns listed in order to get a reference version online.

I hope this can help preserve the patterns from Sand in the future: http://flypattern.org/authors/john-sand

 

Green Highlander – spey edition

Earlier this year I got a order for some Jock Scott with heron hackle instead of the normal body hackle, they turned out great, so before the last big trip of the season I tied up a Green Highlander with a similar approach. The fly turned out great – the movement in the water, the profile it had in the river left something to explore more! Sadly no takers, and the last day I fished a new pool with sinking line: the line & hook snagged deep down, so it was pulled so hard the partridge M2 #1/0 hook got bent (that hook can take a lot of beating….). Back to tie up a few more for next season!