La Pesca Mosca e Spinning
a cura di «La Pesca Mosca e Spinning»
Andrés Touceda was born in La Coruña in 1960, but nowadays lives in Vigo. Both cities are in Galicia, a region situated just on the North-West corner of Spain. Galicia is on the map above Portugal, the river Miño draws the frontier between the countries. To the North is the Cantabrian sea, and to the West the Atlantic Ocean. Being a very wet region, thousands of streams and rivers run across the land. So, he had the privilege of practicing fishing since he was a child. He started fishing at sea with his grandfather, who took him, for the first time, to go fishing at sea when he was 5 or 6 years old. He started fly fishing 20 years ago, after watching some videos and reading some books about fly fishing. His experience, by that time, fishing in rivers was very poor. To learn fly fishing techniques was not easy. He spent the first season fly fishing without a catch. He stopped fishing at sea as he put all his efforts and time in learning the new technique to fish in rivers.
His interest in tying started at the same time that his interest in fly fishing. Learn how to cast a line and how to tie a fly were his objectives from the beginning. He got into a fishing club were he was taught the first steps in both subjects. After some time, he had a lot of fly tying and casting books. He admired how fishermen tied their patterns so he spent a lot of time watching their imitations and studying their techniques to tie his own flies. The most deep he went into fly tying the most interest he felt. He spent hundreds of hours, after fishing seasons, at fields and public parks practicing his cast. Names as Dough Swisher, Carl Richards, Mel Krieger, Joan Wulff, or Ed Jaworowski, became very soon his reading mates. But it was Alejandro Viñuales, a fly casting instructor, who helped him to improve his casting technique. Casting, tying and the understanding of the aquatic environment are three necessary areas to cover for anybody who wants to become a complete fly fisherman.
Stuart Hardy started tying flies at the age of 15 – then took a break of about 30 years or so. He has been tying salmon flies for a little over four years with a focus on freestyle flies with classic roots, and draws inspiration for his colour schemes from many years working on mountains and rivers in his early career as an Adventure Guide. What started as a passion for tying has now become an obsession with collecting, and he has amassed one of the most significant early fly tying and hook collections in the UK, including GM Kelson's personal Fly Tying kit. His creations combine rare materials, with vintage or handmade hooks which he also manufactures – to compliment specific designs, and he is becoming well known among collectors for his 22ct gold ribbed bodies, and thought provoking interpretations. He will be tying at shows around the world in 2016 from Seattle to Germany, and the Czech Republic to Ireland to feed the enthusiasm of his followers. After a chance discovery of Hardy's Monoplane designs his artistic flies have evolved to be some of the most inspiring and provocative in the fly tying world. These otherworldly creatures have become his signature and he is very much looking forward to visit Italy and demonstrate this artistry at the show.
Hans van Klinken retired from the army in April 2012. After a 35-year career, Hans left his position as Commander of the Royal Dutch Army Gunnery School. His retirement hours are consumed with fly fishing, fly tying, workshops, classes, lectures, writing, photography, and when he does find some spare time available, he continues his work as an outdoor journalist.
Hans was born in 1956 in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. As an inquisitive child, he began bait angling at the age of six in a nearby lowland brook called River Dommel. Then, the river was abundant with fish and was even known for a respectable population of brown trout too. Hans remembers his first experience with fly-fishing around the age of 15 while in Norway. He immediately fell in love with the unbridled beauty of the Northern Regions. He continued to regularly travel to Scandinavia to spend the summer holidays well into the late nineteen-nineties. Scandinavia offered a vast array of river systems and lakes that allowed Hans to hone his fly-fishing skills. His first venture into fly-tying occurred in 1976. Within three or four years he was creating his own designs. His preference for parachutes led him to develop several unusual patterns and tying techniques.
Hans admits that he was an absolute dry-fly purist until the early nineteen eighties. However, in 1984 he began to recognize the value of other types of flies such as, nymphs, streamers, and emergers. Unlike most noted European fly-fishers, Hans' first salmon and sea trout were being caught on dry flies.
Hans still ranks his greatest outdoor experience as one that occurred in 1975. On his last and longest student holiday, almost four months, he survived in the wilderness of Northern Lapland. He learned firsthand what it was like to survive in the forest and on the tundra. His mentor and teacher was an elderly Lap who mostly communicated with his hands and feet.
By the age 20 having possessed the desire and energy for travelling, Hans had seen and experienced large portions of the wilderness of northern Scandinavia. His travels included Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia and Finland. Here, his dry fly fishing landed him char, trout, grayling, pike, perch, whitefish, sea trout, arctic char, grilse and salmon. He fished places like Tjuonajokk, Alta and Tana rivers. He travelled to Spitsbergen (Svalbard), spent some time on the Lofoten and has visited Leningrad.
After nearly a decade (1971-1981) of exclusively fly-fishing in Scandinavia, Hans also began travelling to other European countries such as Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Austria and Switzerland.
When he related his success with his series of large dry-fly patterns and techniques, he was generally met with skepticism from the ‘experienced’ and noted fly fisherman. Maybe it was his youthful age of 20. Undaunted, Hans stayed on his chosen path and sought out those fisherman and friends with similar thoughts and ideas. His success with the large series of patterns he had developed in Scandinavia would prove to be enduring. In 1981 the army relocated them to the north of Germany. Now, living in even closer proximity to Scandinavia, more time on the water was possible for him. Fly-fishing became his lifelong obsession here. In 1982, for small groups of individuals who loved to fish in Scandinavia, Hans conducted his first private workshops in Bremen and Hamburg. His job in the army allowed for a good deal of ‘down time’ which in turn allowed him to visit and fish in Scandinavia waters between six and ten times a year. This was a perfect situation for building up a fly-fishing experience that would reach unprecedented dimensions.
In 1986 the Army took Hans back to Holland with a job that still permitted him to pursue his passion. He had little fly fishing experience in Holland and not many Dutch people knew much about him because he had spend so many years abroad. That began to change when he joined the general meeting of the Dutch Fly Fishing Association at a time when they were seeking new staff members. Hans joined as a member of the editorial staff of the Dutch Fly fishing magazine, and remained there for fifteen years. In addition, in 1986 he became the Dutch-area secretary of the Grayling Society in Holland. And he remains there today.
Hans also began to give more lectures, tying demonstrations and workshops. The year 1986 was a very memorable time in his fly-fishing career. He visited the US and was able to returned to England, Wales and Scotland again where his Klinkhåmer and Leadhead became proven successes. The Klinkhåmer Special's first real success occurred in the UK on the Welsh Dee where he fished with Ian Small. The stories of his unimaginable success on a beautiful stretch of the River Dee began to spread faster than a wildfire.
Hans is also well known for providing an excellent non-profit guiding service, mainly for worldwide friends in Scandinavia. Since 1996, he yearly travels to Canada where he spends his long summer holidays doing a lot of fly fishing and conducting fly-tying classes and workshops with kids and women. This allows him to test new patterns on Atlantic salmon, Pacific salmon, steelhead, different char species, shad, inconnu, whitefish, pike, grayling, trout, and small mouth bass. In his spare time he organizes some workshops and classes for fly-fishing novices and kids, up to seasoned veterans. He enjoys sharing his knowledge about fly-fishing and fly-tying, and is particularly skilled in the taking of Atlantic salmon and grayling on dry flies. Hans' most favourite patterns are parachutes, emergers, realistic nymphs and some large series of special Atlantic Salmon flies (dry, wet and nymphs). Since 1986, Hans has given several classes and workshops in the Netherlands, Wales, England, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Canada, Asia and U.S.A.
From 2009-2012 Hans helped out the United Fly-Anglers Organization of Malaysia with some fly tying expertise and was deeply involved to realize the first International Fly Fishing Festival in Kuala Lumpur, one of the first fly-fishing and fly-tying events in this part of Asia.
He has written for many international and club magazines as well as contributing to several books by his friends, such as: Tying Flies with CDC by Leon Links, The World's Best Trout Flies by John Roberts, To Rise a trout by John Roberts, River trout flies by John Roberts, Fly Fishing for grayling by John Roberts, Trout on the nymph by John Roberts, Illustrated Dictionary of Trout flies by John Robers, Fly Tyers of the world volume 1 by Steve Thornton, Fly Tyers Masterclass by Oliver Edwards, The Complete Book of the Grayling by Ron Broughton, Fluer med historie by Mogesn Espersen, 60 fluer til regnbuer by Mogens Espersen, The Complete Book Of Fly Fishing by Malcolm Greenhalgh, Modern Atlantic Salmon Flies 1st and 2nd edition by Paul Marriner, 96 Sterke fluer some flyter by Pål Krogvold, Les plus belles mouches de peche by Nicolas Ragonneau, Fluebinderens bibel (Trout flies) by Barry Ord Clarke and many, many more. Today Hans write his own columns in magazines in US, Europe, Asia and Canada. He also works on several special fly-fishing projects.
Hans van Klinken's best-known patterns are the large L.T series, developed in Norway in the early eighties: All dry flies and these include the Klinkhåmer Special and ParaPoly Sedge. Also well-known are his Leadheaded grayling bugs, the Caseless Caddis series, the Remerger series, his Flymphs, the Baetis nymph and dun variation. In addition, the Once and Away series, the Ugly Bugs, his lake trout and inconnu streamers and the Culard series. Less well known are his personal productive series of salmon patterns, of which many are dries. Amazing are Hans' salmon nymphs and his unique and large Bondal series of wet salmon-flie.
Finally, Hans supports and sponsors wildlife and environmental projects close to his heart. He is noted for donating to charity all of his proceeds from auctions of his flies, and his appearance fees from "commercial" workshops and classes. Hans does all his workshops and classes for free, except once in a while he asks for some money for charity reasons or to pay his travel expenses now he is retired. Since 1986 Hans has returned thousands of dollars to different charitable projects and wildlife organizations.
Niklas Dahlin has since his youth loved fishing, but he became a fisherman when he discovered fly fishing. His life as a fly fisherman started with tying flies; tried to fish with the fly for the first time in the summer of 2005, thought it was interesting but nothing more happened than that. During the Christmas holidays 2005 and 2006 he visited a fishing store and they had a beginners kit on sale, felt kind of bored at the moment and thought he could give it a go. Discovered that tying flies was a great recreation, tying flies made him calm and he found it to be a great way to empty heavy thoughts gathered at work. After a while he felt ready to give the more advanced tying a chance, found that he really loved the traditional patterns, especially the early American dry flies, the so called ‘Catskill style dry flies’. Another genre that has caught his attention is the English ‘North Country flies’, basically he just loves everything traditionally.
He once read an article that caught his interest, the headline was the flyfishers club of Londons mantra «There is more to fishing than catching fish»… Those words says it all. When he doesn’t tie flies he works with a fly fishing magazine in Sweden, «Flugfiske i Norden» («Flyfishing in Scandinavia»). Also he arranges every year a flyfishing only show in Uppsala Sweden.
Niklas tied flies at several fairs here in Sweden, also tied abroad, once at The International Tying symposium in Newark and several times at the British International Flyfair. At these events he met loads people who have inspired him, people like Dave Brandt, Mike Valla and a few who really have helped him out and that he nowadays calls his friends Ted Patlen and Joe Bonasera.
Igor Stancev è nato e vive insieme alla moglie Nadica a Skopje, in Macedonia. Ha costruito la sua prima mosca a 12 anni, senza far ricorso a nessuno strumento; la passione per la pesca a mosca e per la costruzione è cresciuta in modo particolare nel corso dei suoi studi di ingegneria elettronica. Negli ultimi venti anni Igor e Nadica hanno condiviso lo stesso amore per la natura, la macrofotografia e la pesca a mosca. Fra il 1997 e il 2001 hanno vinto insieme 43 premi nelle più importanti competizioni internazionali di costruzione in Norvegia, Slovenia, Germania e Irlanda. Si esibiscono regolarmente nelle principali manifestazioni di pesca mosca europee illustrando le loro tecniche innovative. Sono spesso membri delle giurie nelle competizioni di costruzione, fra le quali l’italiano WTO e il German Open Fly tying Championship. La coppia svolge professionalmente le attività di costruttori, fotografi e autori di libri e articoli. I loro scritti e le loro foto sono pubblicati regolarmente nelle più prestigiose riviste specializzate di tutto il mondo: «Fly Tyer» (USA), «Ribic» (Slovenia), «Perhokalastus» (Finlandia), «Fish und Fliege» (Germania), «Flugfiske i Norden» (Svezia), «Fluefiske» (Norvegia). Hanno partecipato con i propri dressing a otto libri: tre in Francia, tre in Norvegia, uno in Inghilterra, uno negli Stati Uniti. Dal 2007 sono ambasciatori della Italian Fly Fishing School for Macedonia. Hanno una figlia, Lara, già promettente costruttrice e pescatrice a mosca.
Ed Berg has been tying and designing flies for over forty-five years. Ed ties flies for a wide variety of fish including trout, bass, panfish, and a variety of saltwater species. He does some custom commercial tying, and has been published in a number of fly fishing magazines and books including David Klausmeyer’s Guide Flys and Steve Thornton’s Flytyers of the World. He is on the prostaff of Whiting Farms, Daiichi Hooks, Fort Shockley and Nymph-head Beads and is an FFF Certified Casting Instructor. He has been a demonstration tier and instructor at various FFF Conclaves and Fly Fishing and Tying shows across the USA as well as France, Germany, Slovenia, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and the United Kingdom for the past twenty years. For twelve years he was the only American tying at «Le Monde de la Peche a la Mouche» in Paris, France. He is the only person to demonstrate fly tying at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. Since moving to Colorado he is exploring all that great Colorado fishing water and making bamboo fly rods.
Nato nel 1964, Federico Renzi pesca da quando aveva quattro anni, da venticinque solo a mosca. Ha iniziato a costruire mosche quasi prima di imparare a lanciare. Si è laureato in Scienze agrarie con una tesi sul persico reale e lavora come enologo presso diverse aziende in Toscana e Umbria. La pesca che più lo affascina è la mosca secca durante una schiusa d’insetti, materia che ha approfondito fino a ideare diversi dressing per imitare non solo le fasi classiche della metamorfosi ma anche gli stadi intermedi tra una fase e l’altra. Le sue mosche sono apparse in tre libri norvegesi e uno inglese. Da ormai diversi anni è invitato regolarmente alle più importanti fiere d’Europa per fare dimostrazioni di costruzione.
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