Viking Lars | Friday, 23 August 2024
I’ve been writing these FPs for over 20 years and for a long time, I had Tuesday as my regular day. Then for some reason I took over Saturdays. I can’t remember why or even when, but it was years ago. 20 years in and I still manage to forget sometimes. In fact, so often that Paul always sends me a reminder, usually on Fridays. For a while now I’ve actually been ahead and had 2 or 3 pages uploaded. Which of course is nice but also an absolute guarantee that I’ll forget it when there are no more on the server.
Imagine then what happens when Paul writes and asks me to swap my Saturday out with Mika’s Friday. Well – this! My FPs is *very* late (it’s 4pm here). Paul did remind me at 1pm, but I was giving a talk on medieval city life, so I didn’t see it until 3, where I had to have something to eat. Paul had also forgotten, btw, otherwise I’m sure he would have sent me a reminder yesterday. That’s how we roll and that’s why we’re never running a tight ship, but that’s why we’re masters at short term problem solving.
Well, as it happens I’ve been tying some flies that last couple of days. It began with me tying someSonic Sunburst Muddlers that my friend Morten is behind.
It didn’t take long before I began thinking about a hackle version and I moved that over on a tube. I wanted to add weight, because despite it being a muddler head fly, I want it to fish deep. In un clear water a fly that pushed some water as it swings is good and a muddler head can be trimmed to nearly any size you want. After a handful of the hackle versions I sent a quick cell shot to Matt Klara. “Stick a squirrel zonker on instead of the hackles and it’ll be a perfect sculpin imitation!” So I did (and a pair of fake jungle cock eyes) and clearly he’s right. I didn’t have any natural coloured deer hair left, so I had to use this chocolate brown, but that’ll do.
It's nice and I like it and there’s absolutely nothing new or brilliant about it. But it’ll work and with the Pro Sportfisher FlexiWeight system I can fine tune the weight. Simple pattern:
Tube: Pro Sportfisher NanoTube.
Weight: I combine RAW-weights and FlexiBeads to what I need.
Wing: A tapered strip of opossum or squirrel (here opossum).
Head: Spun deer hair and a Pro Sportfisher conhead.
Done – it takes me 5 minutes to tie one, so I won’y cry myself to sleep if I lose one or two.
Have a great weekend!
Lars