Tying to ease the mind

 

After two weeks of doing things that made me stressful and down, I was finally able to tie something. And I must say that it felt really good! I struggled a bit with what I wanted to tie (I still have to tie a lot of dry flies and nymphs), but, because it has been a while since I’ve tied a pike fly (and that is the kind of tying that I get the most satisfaction from), the choice wasn’t so difficult after all. I just tied me a couple of ‘Lonesome Tom’ patterns that I can use in the river Semois. They’re not to big (about 12 cm), tied on a TOF SS-1930 INOX, size 3/0.

White/pink and

white/chartreuse.

Ezine update

I know I’m a bit late, but here they are anyway. Just click on any image or check them out with the other ezines on the right.

 

The new “Flymage Magazine”.

 

The new “This is Fly”.

 

The new “Sleeping In the Dirt”.

100% RELAX

There’s nothing that makes you feel better than living outdoors for a while. I got home a couple of days ago and I’ve been very busy since, so I already want to go back, but that won’t be before another (demanding) week and a half. But here’s already something about my last trip.

 

This is what it’s all about of course, catching trout.

I won’t post a lot of pictures of them, because they were all between 25 and 30 cm, and they all look the same.

 

Except for the different way they are speckled.

 

I also have to say that I didn’t fish as much as I intended to. Sure, I’ve fished every day, but only in the evening. The rest of the day was purely relaxing, reading, enjoying nature and silence, and most of all tying flies (I’ll do an other post later on my most popular ties of the moment), and watching this family of swans (with 7 chicks!) who visited me a couple of times daily.

 

We are still only aloud to fish from the river bank in Belgium (until June 4), so I intended to fish in France, but this has been the warmest springtime since 1893 (and an extremely low water level), so all of the hot spots that I knew were totally covered with flowers.

 

And I am proud to present my pupil, Kylian Colmant, seriously infected by the fly-tying virus, and a natural talent to cast a fly rod. He visited me a couple of times a week to tie flies and learn how and where to cast them.

Even his twin sister Marion came along now and then, to give it a try (of course, all of her flies had to be pink).

 

And afterwards we had to test the flies of course.

I can guarantee a lot more pictures like this in the future, because he is a real natural when it comes to casting a fly, and we have big plans together for all kinds of species…