Sun, Silver and Sea

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

Every time it is different -- last year it was a bit too cold, this year it was opposite -- almost 25 degrees during the Easter was for sure a bit too much for  sea trout’n. When the water temperature exceed 10 or even 14 degrees, one must have enough patience to hook a silver bullet  during the daytime. Especially under the clear blue sky! So the hot time for  fishing was  from 4-10 at the morning and vary late at the evenings.   Cast after cast  it was all about the patience, feel of the strip and intuition! Flies was not so important as they are sometimes, and not surprisingly  Grey Fred was hanging on the other end of my line at least more that others. Some focus on flies some on  presentation! Here you can see how it was, yeh and it was not too bad…

Share and enjoy!

SHRUBE Fly

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
It’s been a while since my last post, but it does not mean that I was dead or have forgot about my frequent readers. Winter was the time to focus a bit more on Forum and fly tying two. So where is the result? Not so fast…
Meanwhile it is hard to design a perfect fly! One that is easy to tie, but in same time with great looks and moves,  but most important – magnetic to fish. Especially when it comes to saltwater shrimps. And I’m not saying, that there are no great patterns arround – of corse there are, like Pattegrisen and general patterns likes Magnus and Grey frede. But you always may add or change something… In the search of perfection I was always thinking about perfect Shrimp fly on the tube, with the stable movement in the water and all other benefits that one may have out of tiny small plastic piece. Hence I am a salmon fishermen two I do like tube flies – they are very versatile: you can change the hook if needed, add some prepared tails, put a heavier hook and land the trophy with more confidence. After all, another forgotten benefit – you can tie almost translucent flies, that is close to impossible on the hooks. Unfortunattelly saltwater fly fishermen in my oppinion so far have underrated tubes, by using trusted single hooks. Maybe only those big game boys who are focusing on Salefish and other giants know the true value of tubes… But not here in the Baltics. Ouahhh..,  still it is hard to find established tube patterns. So, after several modifications, here comes the Shrube fly. Why SHRUBE? Because SHRimp and tUBE, and it is shorter than shrimp pattern tied on tube. Ok, you can rather coppy it or change, but always keep in mind that fly must have a certain mass distribution otherwise it will not move as sexy as sea trout loves it? Certainly you can replace Polar Fiber with Spey hackle or CDC with other feathers, never mind! After all presentation matters most! So, i’m leaving today to chase the Swedens silver and who knows.. maybe SHRUBE will do the thing!
I will let you know…

It’s been a while since my last post, but it does not mean that I was dead or have forgot about my frequent readers. Winter was the time to focus a bit more on Forum and fly tying two. So where is the result? Not so fast…

SHRUBE fly

SHRUBE fly

Meanwhile it is hard to design a perfect fly! One that is easy to tie, but in same time with great looks and moves,  but most important – magnetic to fish. Especially when it comes to saltwater shrimps. And I’m not saying, that there are no great patterns arround – of corse there are, like Pattegrisen and general patterns likes Magnus and Grey frede. But you always may add or change something… In the search of perfection I was always thinking about perfect Shrimp fly on the tube, with the stable movement in the water and all other benefits that one may have out of tiny small plastic piece. Hence I am a salmon fishermen two I do like tube flies – they are very versatile: you can change the hook if needed, add some prepared tails, put a heavier hook and land the trophy with more confidence. After all, another forgotten benefit – you can tie almost translucent flies, that is close to impossible on the hooks.

(more…)

Suffering the spring silver

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

At work

At work

Yepp, bit late, but its better now than never. Here is the report from our seatrout trip! You can never know… Last year we where bit late, so we have planed our seatrout trip few weeks earlier this year. It is allways hard to predict when to come, because weather can change pretty fast. In the best case we expected that whater will be arround 6 degrees at arrival and will warm up constantly during the trip. From the wery begginig, actually it was friday’s evening, things seemed pretty good.

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Brushing the Shrimps

Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Brushed shrimpo...

Brushed shrimpo...

While still sharing the oppinion: “Thats not the fly, its the driver!” during the last week i have started to load my fly boxes with different Seatrout flies. Season is too close, so boxes should be loaded. This year, in between all other patterns i have focused on saltwater shrimp tying -- quite a funny flies, that can produce a decent takes and strong memories. In general i think that classic Magnus and Grey frede patterns mimics also some invertebrates from baltic sea two, but however, sometimes we are fooling the fish (actually our selves) with precise imitations. Yes, this times it is shrimps. The main problem when tying the shrimps on a bit bigger hook is the size of the hackle you can get to properly palmer the flies body. Of course everyone likes these long shrimp legs -- hopefully seatrout too, but how can we tie such a fly? Easiest and one of the best ways is to use spey hackle feathers, but if there are not as much colors around as you would like to use. Or, maybe you need a bit softer material? Then -- BRUSH IT!
Yes, with the brushes you can use a lot of different materials for legs, starting from bucktail, marabou, synthetic stuff and even squirrel tail. I have added here few patterns from my tying bench, and i’m pretty confident that these should do the thing. Especially I like flies with softer materials like marabou, turkey and so on, but in case of opposite, i have prepared some bucktailed and squirrled shrimpo. Share and enjoy.
See you next week, video and pictures are below!
Turkey shrimp

Turkey shrimp

Greyfrede?

Greyfrede?

Squirrled shrimp

Squirrled shrimp

BUCKTAIL edition

BUCKTAIL edition

Mission sea trout!

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Sea, wind, a little bit of cold and fatigue, but you are still in move, in move with only one aim – to land a silver bullet. What for or what it is all about? I would say it is about ability to face the sea with a small rod in your hands and a big hope that your efforts will be rewarded. And when it happens you know the feeling…

Sea trouted

Sea "trouted"

So, last few days together with Lithuanian friends I was back in Sweden – this time to chase see trout or Havsöring as they name it. Besides main mission – this fishing story was also filmed for Lithuanian TV. Originally we were planning to visit Swedish cost early at April, but, because of several obstacles, dates where changed. Little bit too late one may say. Yes, but better late than never. Last year, in mid April, there was quite a nice fishes landed in region we where visiting, so the hopes was quite high… 5 kilo is a some kind of a dream, but 3 kilo sounds little bit more realistic. Before the trip I have prepared some versions of famous Grey Frede, also I tied different Sand Eel imitations with and without epoxy heads. Yeaah, there was a psycho type fly`s and classical Magnus too. So, a few reasons to expect a nice takes…

In general, fishing was quite tough in terms of casts needed to get the take and this story is about fishing impressions and conclusions. One is for sure – I will be back again.

King of the nets

King of the nets

Before we started our friends from Scandinavia mentioned that sea trout fishing at coast in this season was not so good. A good sign, especially if you keep in mind that you must succeed, because otherwise weekly TV fishing story will be about… Hmmm, about how good is to fish with the fly rod even if there is no fish landed. Quite wearily…

At the first evening, when we where looking for the possible places, I noticed that sea is quite warm and it was a disappointment. In other terms it means that fish can also find food far from shore and we can’t expect a lot of takes. On the other hand, there was good news too – amount of net fishing was decreased this season, at least I heard such a rumor, that may be can be proved with a bulky net collection that we founded all around the coast we where fishing. And only one net in the sea – usually it is opposite.

Recoverd sea trout kelt

Recovered sea trout kelt

First few days I was fishing mainly with famous Grey Frede size 4 and 6. Because of the fact that this part of shore was new for as, it was necessary to move all the time to find a perfect spot – so this fly was a nice choice – you can fish it in shallower waters with immediate retrieve after presentation. If you fish a little bit deeper spot – just wait a while when fly sunk and retrieve a little slower. In terms of weather first day was the best one – a little wind from sea and cloudy fogy conditions where perfect for fish to come closer to shore. I noticed that in the small bay there was a quite high concentration of baby sea trout feeding at the surface, and almost immediately landed two of them – so if there is good food source there must be bigger ones too. Around 12 I felt sudden take and first sea trout around 1 kilo jumped out of the water. Almost 20 minutes later I landed another one – this time it was recovered kelt silver yet slim one. Not a bad start – all the fish was cought with Grey Frede – the classical sea trout fly. Evening was even better – landed only one, but hooked another that escaped almost at my knees and had another two ore three nice takes. (more…)