Lars Christian Bentsen, famous Danish flyfisherman, master fly-tier, archaeologist and bag-fetisher reveals his secret tips...

Here's the latest tip!

Nymph-fishing
Some of these Viking Tips are more or less “general flyfishing wisdom” and some are definitely true Viking Tips.
Now, I haven’t read very many books on heavy nymphing, but I’ve developed rather a special leader-setup for exactly this kind of fishing. So please let me know if I’m repeating ancient wisdom.....

I started out with a very long, more or less standard tapered leader. I found that my nymphs needed loads of lead to get down, as they had to pull with them some quite thick mono. I then began to make the tapered part quite short, a few yards, and then added a rather long tippet.

My nymph-leader has now deteriorated into a completely level piece of 7lbs BS mono. Granted that this is a real bitch to cast and more than difficult to present properly. But that’s basically the whole idea as well.
First of all, it readily lands in heaps, allowing the nymph to sink freely and quickly. Secondly, the long thin piece of mono presents a quite little resistance, also allowing the nymph to sink faster.

When you’re casting and fishing a heavy nymph and perhaps a strikeindicator it doesn’t really look pretty anyway. And the greatest benefit I’ve discovered is the fact that I can now tie my nymphs lighter and still have them sink as deep. And the casts to the lies are also shorter as the nymph sinks faster.

As I have a line designated for heavy nymphing I have simply spliced a loop on my flyline and I then tie a Perfection Knot on the tippet and loop-to-loop the whole thing together. I use a special line that has a quite short belly (24 feet) and a short fronttaper. This is because my local streams are small and I need a line that’ll load my rod quickly and carry the fly, leader and indicator well. I do suffer the occasional knot on the leader, caused by the lousy presentation, but that’s a drawback I can accept (besides I can always blame the leader :-).

Flyfishing - loops on monofilament runninglines
Do you ever fish with monofilament runninglines? No? Well, then don’t read any further :-) If you on the other hand do, then you may have been bothered by the fact that it’s quite difficult to make loops on mono runninglines. If you only use one shootinghead, then it’s easy to needle-knot it to the mono, but if you like me prefer to have the option of changing shootingheads, you’ll need a loop. It took me a while to figure out how to make them and there are several ways. I’ve tried whipping them and glueing them together with Crazy Glue, but I’ve also seen these slip. I’ve used a braided sleeve, and that works alright, but it also needs to be glued onto the line, and as soon as glue becomes and integral part of the system, I don’t like relying on it, as especially Crazy Glue tends to wear off over time. The best method I’ve come across thus far (I actually invented it myself), is to cut say a 4 inch piece of an old flyline (or the back end of any flyline). Strip the coating and splice a loop as I’ve described it here. Any regular to this site should recognize Carl's great handywork. Now, simple as anything, nailknot the mono runningline to the piece of flyline, right up close to the loop and trim everything neat!!! It’s safe, it’s knotted, it’s small and it’s fairly easy!

Flyfishing - ferrules parting ways :-)
Have you ever had the experience of the tipsection of your flyrod flying off in a cast? It’s not a very good one and usually it’s the result of the rod not being put together properly. However, especially with older rods, keeping the ferrules together can be difficult. Try applying some ferrule wax. There are two kinds – the commercial kind and ordinary candle wax. If you wish to use candlewax, apply some all around the ferrule (male part) and then twist it vigourously between your fingers to evenly distribute the wax on the ferrule. Make sure you have just a thin layer. I have some of the commercial kind too from U-40 (called Ferrule Lube II) and it is quite good. It’s very thin, almost like water, and you simply dip the male ferrulepart into the bottle and let dry. If needed, this is repeated. The only problem with this is that it’s almost too good. The rod can be really difficult to take apart after a days fishing. When salmonfishing with doublehanders, rods coming apart can be a real problem, because the speycasting really twists the rod length-wise, so a good ferrulewax is imperative and to further subdue this problem ever occuring, I always use heavy tape around the ferrules on my doublehander. This eliminates the problem and can be used on singlehanders as well of course.