Author: Paul Arden

Round 3 – Entry 17 – Dr Ling

Paul killed my car. That’s how I got a Hot Thorpedo.

Back in 2011 Paul was invited as one of the IFFF certification examiners for the inaugural Malaysian Fly Fishing Festival. After the event we took him fishing up north at a huge reservoir called Belum in the jungle for snakehead. That was when he fell in love with the fishing and the place. A year later he decided to come back to Belum for a longer trip, and he needed a car.

It’s not that I didn’t know about Paul and cars but what the hell, he was a likeable scoundrel. I was on the verge of changing my Kia Sorento so I leased out the car to him for a month and expecting the worst at the end of it.

Well it was even worse than I thought, the car went through the jungle, banged a few trees, Paul slept in it, dried all his stuff including socks on top of it, had a few elephants paid it a visit but luckily left due to the ?smell and never came back.

Anyway Paul decided Belum was where he wanted to stay for a while. He returned the car, I sent it to the workshop and they said send to scrapyard!

In remorse Paul decided we should commemorate the event with a custom Hot Thorpedo WNN 8926.

Round 3 – Entry 16 – Piffen Hammenstig

My new found pastime – Fly fishing

I began fishing when I was 5 years old. I used to put on my life vest, grab a bucket and my rod and go down to the jetty together with my cat and fish for baltic herring, just the cat and I. How many parents would allow that today I wonder? When my mother made dinner later at night I only ate the tail fins that was crunchy like crisps.
When I got older I began fishing more for pike but when we moved away from the sea in my teens, I kind of quit on fishing.

The road to a Hot Torpedo
Fast forward some 30 years or so to April this year.
We were going with our band Yakumbé on a four week tour, playing our music for kids in schools around in Sörmland, Sweden. One sunny morning, on our way to a school, we passed a beautiful lake that laid totally blank and I just got that compelling urge to go out and fish again. Said and done, a couple of days later I went to a lake stocked with rainbow trout and brown trout with my spinning rod and a new bombarda and began fishing without any luck. That same day they had a fly fishing theme at the lake so one could try casting with a fly rod and I tried it out. I found it hard but fun to cast. That made me research the net for fly fishing and resources on casting technique and I stumbled upon a site called Sexyloops.

The site looked a bit dated compared with todays standard but there was something really exciting with it. There was a section called The Experience. Here, there was this guy Paul, teaching Karen casting and used a relaxed approach with a language and humour much to my taste. I also found tips on fishing stillwater, which is what’s at hand here in Stockholm if you want to fish for trout and a lot of other good stuff. So I bought myself a cheap second hand but unused rod-set and flies from a guy at a swedish fly fishing forum and began to struggle to get my flies out in the lake, which proved to be a bit hard. I tied the most incredible knots on the leader without even touching it in some kind of magic way while casting. Needless to say I didn’t succeed in catching any fish for a couple of months.

Then I found out that this fly casting wizard Paul designed rods that was to his liking and according to the reviews I read, both on Sexyloops but also on a thread on the swedish forum where people named their best rods I understood that the Hot Torpedo was the best rod available! A couple of months after the tour with the band I got the salary from that and suddenly I had the money to buy this exceptional rod. But since I read everywhere that good rods weren’t for beginners, I contacted Paul and he told me that it would most likely improve my casting skills, so I went for a Hot Torpedo 6 and I made up my own colour scheme with my favourite colours on the whippings. It came to me and was super nice to look at. It was also so much nicer to cast, compared to my cheap rod that I haven’t used since.

Now I cast with much less magic knots and have actually managed to catch my first good fish on the fly rod! The first was a 3 kg pike in river Ljusnan though it was trout I was after. And a couple of weeks ago after so many days spent at my favourite lake this summer, I caught my very first sought after rainbow trout on a dry fly and I can’t describe the happiness I felt at that moment. I still have a lot to learn about casting, but now I have the best tool in my hands and I am positive I will have a lot of good moments together with it in the future!

End of ramble/ Piffen

Round 3 – Entry 15 – Sean Geer

The HT4 is not actually a fishing rod. It’s a time machine.

I spent endless summers in the west country as a child. They were endless in all the wrong senses of that word; days, or more often weeks, of Devonian drizzle and dankness. Retrospectively, they seemed only bearable on the days that we stopped to look at the tiny moorland streams. I’d lean over the little stone bridges, desperate for a glimpse of a trout, bewitched by the sight and sound of the water tumbling between impossibly pretty pools – the whole world, and my whole attention, reduced to those few square feet of peaty, bouldery water.

Is there a word for that phenomenon, I wonder? You know what I’m talking about – that sudden telescoping of reality into the area immediately around your fly, the collapse of everything else around your immediate sensory field into a barely perceptible blur. It’s been a regular feature of my life for over thirty years now, but it has rarely been as sudden or vivid as it was this week on Dartmoor. With one stroke of my time machine, I was ten years old again – the weather no kinder, the streams no less mesmerising, the trout still as jewel-like.

I hardly needed something as sophisticated as an HT4 to catch this fish, of course. On streams the size of these, the line barely leaves the rod tip; and in any case, such encounters rarely give one much cause to consider anything as mundane as tackle or fly selection. Still, the Hot Torpedo took me there. Whatever its fishing qualities – and there are many, of course – it’s by far the best tool I know for poking holes in the space-time continuum.

SEXYLOOPS COMPETITION 2017 SHIRT

For the competition Stealth Master shirt, what we’re going to do is to remove the Malaysian Mahseer, replace it with this underwater trout, courtesy of Stuntman Ronan, reduce the Sexyloops back logo to around 1/2 the size (so it looks less like a footballers shirt 🙂 ) And on the front underneath the Sexyloops logo will be the words “Hot Torpedo 2017” and on the opposite side your name plus any casting qualifications/website blurb that you want!

This limited-edition shirt will only be available to competition entrants and is not for sale. Your shirt does not include shipping/post which is 10GBP world-wide!

To claim your shirt you need to write a short story about your Hot Torpedo rod along with photographs (if you don’t have a HT rod then there is still time to buy one!). The top four entrants win the new improved Sexyloops Lumi-line and the very best entry wins a custom built Hot Torpedo rod of his or her choice.

Entries close Dec 15th 2017.

Round 3 – Entry 14 – Michal Duzynski

FINALLY

Hello,
Finally I had a day to myself, finally after many months I took my kayak out, finally I took my SLHT COMP5 to see some water (this rod must be fed-up seeing grass only), AND FINALLY I caught my first fish from the yak and lucky enough it was caught on SL HT.

It was fantastic day, water was very calm and most of all, it was very quiet- just what I needed after days in busy restaurant. Starting with poppers – without luck – and then changed to Bass Vampires in order to dig this Aussie bass from the depths.

The rod as we all know now is fantastic, but I really need to think about my fly line setup. Today I only had Barrio GT125 in 6wt and 10foot leader. Casting in seating position was a bit challenging. In order to not to tick too much I really had to speed up my stroke and at the same time widen the arc- saying that, I mean I wave this stick a lot today.

Anyway as good as the water looked today the action was very slow. Around 8am I was drifting slowly on top of the very dense weed carpet. I cast, and while I was waiting for the fly to sink, guess what- my wife called to ask what time Im coming back (so no full day to myself – as I said at the begining).

In exactly the same moment as I said HELLO – I was on, man this women on the other side of the phone just said hello to the happiest man on Earth. Rod is bending, awsome head shakes, kayak is going left and right and after few minutes I had my first ever fish in my kayak. SLHT did not disappoint as usual.

Sounds cool doesn’t it- but there is another story to that. I think I got more luck than skill. Once I landed this bass I noticed I hooked it above the eye in the gill blade ha ha ha- well still counts right???

On the end of the day I realised what has the most meaning in my fly fishing, regardless what rod you holding in your hand (apart from casting of course)- it’s the take, the tug, the moment the line gets tight, and the first bend in your rod- I am lucky to experience that with best rod there is SL HOT TORPEDO.

Cheers
Mike

ROUND 2 ENTRY 13 Thomas Zullich

2017. August. Late summer. Finally a good day after all the rain and cold … felt like the fist day of proper trout fishing. I was lucky that Per invited me to stay a few days at his hut. The good man even managed to order proper weather … 

 

But what a f…´d up days these was. I was fishing all day on Sunday. Damn sun gave me a sunburn. The fishes were giving me hell. Rising everywhere. I could not have minute for myself and take pictures. Even when these trout rose right by the boat. Fuckers. What is wrong with these guys? Feeding on struggling insects is sign of a very cynical state of mind. I mean, these yellow mayflies were living as nymphs in the mud for a good year or even more and now finally they have a chance to get some …. and what do these trout do? they wait until the six legged friend struggles out of his exoskeleton to than unfold the wings and become airborne. Beautiful – just beautiful. But, this beauty is just ignored by the fish. They just splash and splatter about eating these miniature masterpieces of nature.

 

So I think it´s my damn duty to fling fluff at the finned stupids and trick them into connecting themselves to the end of my leader. But they have wised up. Somehow they know exactly how far I can cast and rise juuuuust outside that range. But hey – not this time. I bought my HT4 and a new line. Ha. I even worked on my tracking and managed to do a bit of a 170 of sorts from the boat. What a surprise. They exploded in shock when they felt the tug. The tug is the drug guys I whispered silently and smiled to myself.

 

Rollback to the late 90´s …. the history of a life changer. It all started with a way too fast car and a police chase I got into. I drove on the famous German Autobahn. There are actually stretches with speed limits. Anyway – overtaking a truck just after that black car which just shot by put me in front of a very quickly approaching silver BMW. I put the foot down to not have the beamer bump into me. However, this argument did not fly with the undercover police guys in the silver machine from Bavaria – no, they were just happy they caught two cars – the black one and me. However, I managed to use the time without a license for a South Africa vacation. A good buddy and me travelled around the SA coast and we ended up in Knysna. The guys we had a few too many with wanted to go fishing the next morning. Hmm, that sounded fun. The first fish I ever caught in my life was a blowfish. Not on the fly, but still. 

 

Through some trials with coarse gear I learned quickly that some sorts of fishing involve a lot of sitting around and waiting and some more waiting. This type of carpfishing involved also immense amounts of gear. I hate carrying stuff, so I wondered what this picture of a boy with a basket and a fishing pole was about. I learned that this was fly fishing. Good concept me thought. Not much gear and one can catch trout. One has to learn to cast though. So my carp fishing friend and me booked a course – which honestly was just a bit better than shit.

 

Even though virus had gotten me it followed a fruitless year of trying and buying the idiotic gear the instructor dude advised. I didn’t know and there weren’t any other around to tell me better. But than I ran into two people who changed the game. Bernie and Paul. Bernie (R.I.P) was an older gentleman fishing the river Kyll. He took me under his wing. It was rough but very good school. I wish he could see me fish now … but I guess he does from “above” and is proud. 

 

Pretty much the same time I went to a fly fishing show in Holland. There was a guy in flip flops and old jeans casting by a pool and performed things some other more official looking blokes asked him to do. His whole easy going attitude was very much to my liking. His casting was mesmerising. Everything looked very relaxed and easy. So after he was finished with his exam I went to him and said. “Hey, what you do looks like something I could do too. Please show me.” I learned that this man was Paul. He was very open and friendly. Once one has seen how Paul casts and experienced his approach to explaining things one knows that this kid has done his homework. We agreed that I should visit him in England.

 

A few weeks later I hopped on a Ryanair machine to London Stansted where Paul picked me up in his mother’s car. (The car did not break down … I wonder what happened) I spent a day at his place by a little kanal. I still remember pretty much everything from that day – including the pike we did not catch. May sound weird, but I really fell in love with this side of fly fishing. The Sexyloops way. Paul and I became friends. He changed my life. Period.

 

Based on Paul’s advise I then bought a Sage XP 9ft 5wt. What a change. The fish I kept and keep catching are proof that I got better and better. With help from all the fab folks at Sexyloops my tying improved also very quickly. I soaked up a lot of information from day one. Allowance to fish in Germany is connected to a rather difficult test. One has to learn a lot of stuff. I liked that. When one starts fishing so late in life, like I did, one wants to learn things the right way, or better said I appreciate the learning in fishing. Volunteering for the scientist responsible for the reintroduction of the salmon – Dr. Jörg Schneider – whom I helped with monitoring and sampling rivers and creeks, gave me access to first hand prime information. Jörg was very helpful and he also sent me to several courses and classes. Electrofishing was one. Very interesting. Wading creeks and small rivers and electro fishing / monitoring and counting fish can easily be called a university of fish lies. 

 

After a few years fishing here and there (US, NZ, GB, Austria, Germany & Scandinavia) I moved to Sweden and then Norway. I wanted to be where the fish are. Sure, there are fish in Germany too, but you’ll be up for quite a surprise should you light a fire by the river there …

 

All that time I fished the XP. I got a 7wt as well. However, I wanted to try other stuff too so had a bit of detour on gear and even got a bamboo rod. Very nice too. 

 

So I fished away in search for trout and happiness. … after several hundred days, hours, minutes, trout, grayling and other fish, smiles, laughter and tears on September 21. 2014 exactly at 14:33 something pretty serious happened. I met this girl. (Yeah “sigh” folks – but hey – It was like a lightening strike) Konstanse became my girl, buddy, friend and fishing partner. She was very much into fishing but has not been fly fishing. We´ll fix that I said. So she needed a proper tool … that was clear. So the choice was easy – trusting Paul’s advise I ordered a HT4. Serial number 7. The rod arrived on time for x-mas. Oh boy so happy she was. Me too —- and I became jealous. So when that pain became too much I ordered another HT4 for myself. HT4 serial number 9.

 

I went through a few phases with my new rod and even strayed aside but kept coming back to her. My number 9. She reminds me of my eX —erm… my XP – just in a better way.

 

What a life I have. Falling through life like a kid chucking fluff at cynical fish in the most beautiful nature one can imagine. This is what the moose looking at the dude in the boat must have thought too. She looked at me for a good while and than continued feeding by the lakeside. The beavers swimming by weren’t stressed either. However, some fish were. 

 

 
Funny though that Paul made a 4 weight instead of a 5, but what he says is so very true. 4 is the new 5.  Maybe I should get a HT6 as well, or would that be too much good for me? 
Better not ask Paul ….
 
 
 
* I have to thank many people – please excuse should I have forgotten someone – I am thankful for every flyfisher I have met and meet. Paul Arden, Bernie Hoffman, Mike Connor. JĂĽrgen Theisen, Andreas Lestander, Stefan Siikavaara, Lars Chr. Bentsen, Ralph Vosseler, Rasmus Hansen, Ole Bjerke, Grunde Løvoll and many many many more ….

 

** I learned that teaching is the best way to learn myself so I teach fly-tying and share the little I know about fishing … you can find my texts & vids on sexyloops.com as well as my own little website – www.tzflyfising.no – a google search will reveal some results too i guess as I have contributed here and there …
 
*** following some images related to flyfishing and friends…