Too much work and no play...

…gives me headache. So the doctor gave me some pills and physiotherapy. Oh great, I should be fishing. Instead I spent 2½ hours extra time at the Helsinki International Airport last night. It may not sound much, but it is a 40 minutes flight...

WT has been posting good fishing reports. Check them out here.

And you should also check out the Flyfishin' blog by Ed. Great stuff. Helps you park your Lexus.

One last thing: I am running out of pictures - so here are some berries for you.

From Misc 2006

Fly Tying Season

The winter is closing in. Although there will soon be little or no fly fishing activities available, this coming season is best fly tying time for me. I can tie two or three hundred flies per winter. And I need those flies next summer, at least some of them.

When a full fly box looks empty

Some years back I did not tie any flies during the winter. Back then I had other things in mind. Back then I didn’t have the flies I need during summer. I had to tie few flies before each fishing trip and I generally felt that my fly boxes were filled with flies I didn’t need.

The main reason for this was that my fly tying was very random - impulsive at best. Most of the flies in my fly box were my own creations – i.e. patterns that should have never been tied. I didn’t use them too much as I didn’t trust them. I was in constant need of reliable patterns. I had a few, but I tied only one or two flies at time, because I was and still am a lazy person who only ties flies when he has to.

Tour de France

Then I read the Tour de France tying by Martin Joergensen. In this article Martin describes few good speed tying tips (most important is that you should tie good bunch of flies in specific pattern instead of just one or two) and tells how you can watch TV and tie flies at the same time. I am not much of a biking fan and Tour de France was finished that year anyway. Instead I was deep in family life as was my wife and we both needed some time for our selves. For my wife it was time to start over the ballet and some Latino dancing. For me it was time to join the fishing club and start tying the flies I so desperately needed.

My way

So I wrote down what fly patterns I would like to fish next season. And I started tying each Tuesday evening. I tied something like 6 to 18 flies per evening. I think that I missed one or two sessions in that winter and ended up with three fly boxes full of flies. And these were no random flies but a disciplined set. Never have I felt as good as I did next fishing season. Of course I had some patterns I didn’t need but I pretty much had the patterns I did need.

I had done that ever since. I must admit that I don’t have the discipline I had the first winter. I do miss a tying evening bit too often, but I still do well enough.

With good fly selection, you can catch anything...

From Life

First snow

From Misc 2006

From Misc 2006

From Misc 2006

From Misc 2006

Could somebody please tell me that the season has ended

I made a short 3 hour fishing trip this weekend. Weather is getting cold and the majority of the fish had moved away from fast water. I was after big rainbows, but did not find them. I managed to land couple nice brown trouts but they were small (bigger was about 35 cm, or 14 inches).

Here is a brown trout picture from same place that I took few weeks ago. This was the smallest, but without doubt the most beautiful. I hope you like it.

From Karvionkoski

Taeniopteryx nebulosa

It is now late October and the next major hatch that will occur here is the February Red Stonefly hatch. And that would be late May or early April. Here are some pictures from last year hatch.

From Life

From Life

From Life

From Life

From Life

Leuctra fusca

From Life

Hunting the trout

Tom has written an excellent article about Stealth.

I will visit a river Karvionkoski this weekend. Wading part of Toms article gives great advice for this river. It is a short stretch, about 200 yards or so. One bank is deep, virtually unwadeable, plenty of good rainbows and smaller browns. Its all about taking cover and keeping low profile if there is no cover. Moving slow. I visited this river twice this summer and in both visits one trout darted off from my boots. Embarrassing moments - yet it happens.

You don't want to see my desk

From Shooting Heads

Wyatt is back

I see that Wyatt from Flytimes has returned. Nice picture from Yellowstone, I hope that others follow...

Pictures from Kuusamo

Some people have liked my Kuusamo trip pictures. I added some better quality pictures to my web album. I hope that you like these. Just click this picture to see all 8 pictures in this album, or click here to start slideshow

Kuusamo

Shooting head testing continues

It's time to continue shooting head testing. I have made few Shooting heads for my 5 weight rod. There is a short floating line (about 7 meters or 23 feet of DT8F). It is good and easy to cast, but it is bit shorter than I like. So I have cheap DT7F that I try next. I also have fast sinking head made of old WF8 sink tip line and sinking one made of DT6S.

The question is: why to do this with relatively light 5 weight rod?
My answer: Why not? With DT7 head, I can cast streamers really well and my outfit is still light.

Have you made custom shooting heads?

From Shooting Heads

Reunited and ready

I now have my old 9' 5 weight 4 piece rod back. Actually it is now 5 piece rod, but not in a bad sense - I just have one extra piece. One might speculate that it is 1/4 chance that I have just right spare piece ready if rod breaks again, but I think that it is more like 1 out of 400.000 that just the right piece breaks.

Last weekend I failed to land three good rainbows in last 15 minutes of fishing session. It must have been because I had the wrong rod...

Patience

It has been a while, but now my rod has been shipped back. (Edit: Currently some nice doggy is sniffing my rod at Finnish Customs.) This experience has raised me to a new level… But my cell phone felled to the floor last night and I found out that buttons [5], [7], [9], [0] and [Menu/OK] aren’t working any more. (Ahem.)

Fly Tying Tuesdays

While there are other forms of entertainment, for me Tuesday evenings are mainly for fly tying. This time I tied a few X-Caddis patterns and something for the stocked rainbow trout:

From Fly-patterns

PS. This one works also for native brown trout...

X-Caddis

I love caddis patterns. They are very important in my waters although caddisflies may not be as beautiful as mayflies. One of my favourite emerging mayfly pattern is Sparkle Dun. This pattern in very similar to tie as X-Caddis. I like simple patterns best, so I added few X-Caddis emergers to my selection.

Sparkle Dun

From Fly-patterns

X-Caddis

From Fly-patterns

October

It has been about three weeks since brown trout fishing season ended here in Finland and I'm trying to cope best I can. Mik at Tamanawis is also suffering from coming end of the season.

So what do I do in October? I should probably get into Pike Fly Fishing, but I haven't. Maybe I will - next year. At this time, the big pike are coming to the shores and are fishable with the rod and fly. There is no seas here, so I can't fish Sea Trout, which would be really great. But no.

However I still have "Stocked Rainbows from Karvionkoski" in my fly fishing agenda... I'm looking forward to that. Lets test if I can have sample from last year here using new Picasa2 Web Album feature.

From Karvionkoski