Testing Klinkhamer Extreme
by Warryn Germon

		Warryn Germon is a passionate Trout fisherman "down under". He has got hold of some Klinkhamer Extreme Hooks and has put them to the test!"

The wind has subsided for a few days this week and the duns have been coming off the Goulburn in good numbers. The most prevalent were an almost sherry coloured Leptophlebid dun equivalent to a # 14 with pale grey wings and later in the week, along with them, a small baetid of about #16 or 18 and on Thursday night there were also many spent Leptophlebid spinners. Caddis also featured in the trout's menu toward dusk.

This gave me a chance to test some of the Klinkhamer flies I had tied on the new Partridge 15BNX Klinkhamer extreme hooks. I took two patterns, a parachute pheasant-tail emerger and another tied in natural hare's fur to imitate the caddis. As these hooks are quite long for there size compared to the caddis grub hooks I would normally use for these types of fly, I restricted the size to a 20. The longer curved shank on these hooks make a well proportioned fly with the wing post tied in at the sharp bend in the hook.

The first afternoon I arrived at the Goulburn above the Breakaway with my 9 foot 4 weight rod at about 4:30 pm and found the duns already coming down in numbers but no fish taking them. Finally found a sipper in a backswirl and he took the little pheasant-tail pattern confidently. I duly landed a nice fish of about 1 ¼ lb.

As the shadows lengthened the fish began to rise in good numbers, but I found myself missing an extraordinary number of takes, feeling several of them, but not connecting. I found another sipper at dusk and my final cast produced another nice brown of about 1 ¼ lb. Very disappointing results considering the number of takes.

I went home and thought about what had gone wrong. The glide I was fishing was fairly swift and normally requires a fast and positive strike to set the hook. What I hadn't taken into consideration was that while the flies appeared to be the size of a normal size 14 caddis grub hook, the gape was still # 20. I had probably been striking too hard.

The next day it was back to the same pool but this time equipped with a little modern glass rod brought out for me from USA . It is a 7 foot 3 piece three weight weighing well under 3 ounces and which I had previously only used in overgrown mountain streams. Its roll casting ability was uncanny.Nothing like the glass rods most of us remember.

The softer rod was the answer. I won't go into detail but I caught seven trout, 6 of which were 1 to 1 ¼ lb, pulled the fly out of one and missed two, one of which were unexplained. Better hook-up rate than usual for me in that type of water.

I must say I enjoyed fishing the little rod and found it up to the task because of the inherent strength of fibreglass. You could feel it bow into the grip but the soft tip stopped me from striking too hard.

The next night a fairly similar result. Six fish hooked. One, a rainbow of at least 1 ½ pound came toward me on the strike and I never caught up to him. He threw the hook on a slack line somewhere behind me. I missed three, but they were splashy rises from small rainbows and to be expected.

All the fish except one were caught on the # 20 Pheasant tail emerger. The other was on a similar hook but tied to represent a caddis. In my opinion these hooks are too long in the shank to tie a caddis emerger and I will stick to another caddis curved hook for these.

The strength of the small hooks was adequate. I never had one straighten or break and the night I caught the 7 fish they were all caught on the same fly. I also like the fact that the point of the hook is slightly offset. I will be using them in a lot of situations in the smaller sizes from 16 to 20.

Regards,

Warryn Germon.