FLYMPH FORUM

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That's really nice, Scott. That white-tipped turkey herl produces a natural "fade" (as Old Hat calls it), and your hen hackle looks alive even dry.

Gunnar Johnson would approve of your Knekestorpare, of that I'm certain. That very pattern caught my first grayling. I have one of these, from his vice. The only difference from yours is the curve of the hackle. His are swept this way: ). Your fly has the killing elements. The name comes from the water where he first fished it; Knekestorpsjön (Lake Knekestorp).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torp_%28architecture%29

dd

That is a VERY nice fly.

It is a very nice fly but without a dubbed body I would not call it a Flymph.

Scott, that is just a lovely fly. I like the pattern a lot and have to nod to the use of that heel in this was. A few of us have tied these and they really do leave an impession. I haven't fished them but would like to. Maybe soon. Nice post.

Roadkill wrote:It is a very nice fly but without a dubbed body I would not call it a Flymph.

Certainly not by Leisenring and Hidy standards. Blended fur dubbings with silk thread showing through are at the heart of a proper flymph. By itself, hackle palmered through the thorax does not make a fly a flymph. Just sayin' ...

Roadkill wrote:It is a very nice fly but without a dubbed body I would not call it a Flymph.

tie2fish wrote:Certainly not by Leisenring and Hidy standards. Blended fur dubbings with silk thread showing through are at the heart of a proper flymph. By itself, hackle palmered through the thorax does not make a fly a flymph. Just sayin' ...

Agree with both of you. When I was reading about the fly over on the Rackelhanen site, I was really taken by the pattern and didn't even think about that. Maybe William or Ray could edit the title, please.

Regards,
Scott

In his book "Flymfer & andra mjukhacklade flugor" (Flymphs & other soft hackled flies), Gunnar mentions that his results with the Black & Peacock Spider and his own creation Knekestorparen led him to explore flies with soft hackles. He found Stewart's "Practical Angler" and then Leisenring /Hidy's masterpiece and eventually became friends with Pete Hidy. To him (Gunnar), Knekestorparen might be more of a spider than a flymph.

He also designed another concept called Emma. His home water is the upper reaches of the River Em, known for very large sea trout below some power stations. In the upper reaches there is 'brown trout' of good size. Gunnar had trouble hooking one of these and believed the cause to be the stiff hackle on his very small fly. When changing to a small flymph, fished dry, this difficulties were overcome. This made him tie a lot of different flies with soft hackles on light dry fly hooks, intended to be fished dry. His reasoning behind this is that the trout will not eject a soft fly as quickly as an ordinary dry fly. He tied them to represent all sorts of insects from the smallest up to Ephemera vulgata. Some of them had soft tails and also the hackle placed at the middle of the body to help balancing the weight of the hook. In this book he tells a story about evening fishing with Emma on trout up to 3kg. He and his friend had great success with fish thad had been impossible to catch on other patterns. He often used hare's ear dubbing, or golden brown opossum, and impregnated the fly in the vice and ginked it by the stream. I know that he often recommended Mustad 94833 (now R30).

dd

Edit. On smaller flies he used up-eyed hooks:http://www.rackelhanen.se/swe/1375.htm

Scott - Based on Stefan's feedback, I've modified the initial post to read "Knekestorparen Spider".

Superbly done, by the way...