KIS-Fly fishing

It's a funny thing that when I started fly fishing it was all about trout and then salmon and wouldn't care less about pike or any other lake fish. Now I spend most of my fishing time here in Finland fishing for pike or any other fish that will bite my fly on the local lake's. Maybe it's just that when you've travelled all over the world fishing for various species you start looking at your local fishing differently? The quality of the trout rivers here in southern Finland is so poor that I just don't have a lot of intrest to fish them and when I do fish them it has to be done in the "off-season" to avoid the crowds. By "off-season" I mean the time when the rivers have not been stocked lately. Fortunately I haven't lost intrest in Atlantic salmon fishing. It is still a sport that really excites me. There's just something special about it. I just hope that in the future there will still be places to do that hobby, because it's ge...

Last week I started test driving my new skagit switch head (420gr) for the up and coming VI trip. When I first got it out of the box I was instantly impressed about the ready made loops on it, they are very well made. I matched it with a #7 Echo SR switch rod and it worked perfectly on it. It worked really well with all types of casts and was a pleasure to use. Tight loops and very good distance when you want it and precision and control even with heavy tips and large flies when the need arises. This is a bizarre line in a way that you can get very good distance from it without having a D-loop? You can just lift it, turn it and shoot it out 20m+ while having the line + tip in front of you in the water? It also flies very well with an overhead cast so it seems like its a real do it all line. I tried it with many tips ranging from a floater to a 16' T-11 tip. To my somewhat suprise it worked very well with everything? Most of the skagit's that I've used this far don't...

I have been working hard on preparing for my up and coming BC, Canada trip. This time we are heading to the northern parts of Vancouver island ( around Port Mcneill) to fish for chrome salmon and steelhead. There's been a lot of fly tying and line winding going on lately and I still got lots of flies to be tied. Thank god I don't have to buy any gear for this trip apart from the odd tippet spool. I have a few switch rods, one #8 single hander and one #9 single hander ready to go. One Galvan T-12, a Danielsson H5D, a Vision XLA 9/10, a Colton Torrent 9/11 and a brand new Echo Ion 8/10 reel ready to fight those amazing fish. So there's room for gear failure. In the past when fishing for Pacific salmon we have broken a lot of gear and I really think that this fishing is the ultimate test for fly gear. If a product can make it there it can make it anywhere! I'm especially intrested in seeing how the new Echo Ion reel will perform. Oh well, off to tie some flies again....

I've thought long and hard about opening a blog and finally here it is! I have some stuff ready to post here as soon as I get them written in english so stay tuned. There's going to be stories about Striped bass and Bluefish fishing, Steelhead and chrome pacific salmon, some new gear and something about casting. I even got a boring rant about Atlantic salmon fishing in Norway on it's way... The stories/posts are not anything that will change the world or some sh#t like that, but I hope there will be some bits in them that will be nice to read...