Viking Lars | Saturday, 17 April 2021
Yesterday was the opening day on the Danish salmon rivers. It’s always a big day with a bi-zillion fishers out and a few really big ones have been caught, including a 124cm/19kg giant from Varde River. The rule of thumb when fishing salmon in Denmark is to fish deep, almost tickling the salmon on the nose with the fly. I know it’s possible to rise a salmon to a small fly and an intermediate line and I think it’s mainly fishing pressure keeping the fish down.
One the less, deep is important and that's undeniably the most effective way to fish. When fishing deep, losing flies is also an inevitable part of the day. With a heightened risc of losing flies, I choose and tie my flies a little differently than when fishing higher in the water.
Weighted flies are a definite advantage, so you get it down as fast as possible and don't lose precious swing-time in the relatively narrow, Danish waters.
Today's PoD is my simplified, heavy Thunder & Lightning - Heavy Thunder appropriately named. It takes me 6-7 minutes to tie and apart from the cost of the hardware, losing it is not too bad and it still retains the colours from the original and has lots of mobility, mainly thanks to the soft, transparent wing.
Pattern:
Thread: Black UNI 8/0.
Tube: Pro Sportfisher black FlexiTube.
Tail: Fl. yellow antron.
Body/weight: Small Pro Sportfisher FlexiBead in gunsmoke.
1st hackle: Orange cock hackle.
Underwing: Root Beer Krinkle Mirror Flash and fiery brown fox. Tie a strand of Root Beer Krinkle Mirror flash and a couple of strands of gold Angel Hair HD.
2nd hackle: Blue guinea fowl.
Overwing: Fiery brown marble fox and gold Angel Hair HD.
Sides: Pro Sportfisher Gen3 synthetic jungle cock.
Head: Gold size M Pro Sportfisher conehead.
A great fly in Denmark and the rest of the world for salmon and I think it's just a colour scheme to die for. One day I want to catch one and a traditionally tied version.
keeping the flies simple and fast to tie for deep fishing also flies for heavy nymphs. First of all, details probably don't matter much deep down and even though most ymphs are fast to tie, it's still annoying to lose too much time in losing time consuming flies.
Have a great weekend!
Lars