Hi, my name is Tero Lannes and I come from Finland. I live near Helsinki, the capital city of Finland. I have graduated engineer (M.Sc. Techn) and work nowadays in IT- business. For me fly fishing and fly tying is the way of living. I also like photography and use a lot of time for canine photography (I have two beagles).
“Tying the Classic Salmon Flies” – for me it took years to find the trailhead. It was in the late 90’s, when I took my first steps on that attractive trail. I remember the evening, when I was plucking up the courage to tie my first salmon fly. “Just tie it”, I said to myself, it couldn’t be so difficult. I don’t remember anything about the tying process or the pattern, but it took only couple hours to tie my first fully dressed salmon fly.
Afterwards I thought “this is almost easy”. Yes easy, but only because I didn’t pay attention to the faults I had made. I had no idea how to tie them right, because I had no mentor.
I began to tie hours a day and learn by myself. I had some old fly-tying magazines and pictures of salmon flies tied by great Finish tyers. I learned by my eyes and by doing. I found a lot of small mistakes from my first flies. One of the funniest things was I had started to tie all the body hackles right from the butt.
Only couple months after, I had tied my first salmon fly I began to tie flies for international competitions. I thought it could be one way to show also my own creations. In the competitions I acquired an own style, which I could call “poor man’s style”. That is because, I didn’t use any rare CITES –materials in my competition flies – never.
There are so many beautiful feathers found from common birds, which are not on the CITES list. I was wondering, why they are so rarely used? So, if there was a competition pattern, which called for jungle cock or macaw, I didn’t tie for that category. I found out very quickly, that there was one competition category exactly made for me – the creation category.
I have continued my journey year after year, tying and reading books and become convinced one thing – Salmon fly-tying will always be a never-ending journey of exploration!
Tero Lannes
Beyond the Sky
Diamonds
FCW
Golden Heart
Plunging Wave
Smooth Dancer
The Falling Star