Karup

My name is Amalie.
I’m 15 years old and I come from Denmark.

My story begins four years ago, when my dad was working on an entry to our local fishing club’s fly tying competition. He was having some issues working out the right technique to weave the Polish woven nymph. By a happy coincidence, I had recently been doing something similar at school; so he asked me to have a go at it. I tried and it worked! With this success, my dad encouraged me to come to the fly tying competition.  I did attend and, to my surprise, I got 3rd place in the nymph category, after just a week of practice.

From then on, my fly fishing and fly tying has gone from strength to strength. For my competitions, I love to tie nymphs and dry flies, and have won seven firsts and one third place in local and national fly tying competitions. I also enjoy fishing.  I tie sea trout flies for fishing on the River Karup and nymph and dry fly patterns for small stream, brown trout fishing.

The last four years have been crazy, with so much to learn and so many exciting opportunities; I just can’t wait for all the wildness that awaits me!

For me, the best river in Denmark is the River Karup, which is located in central Jutland.  It has some of the most beautiful sea trout in the entire world. If you ever get the chance to fish this river, you should. It’s one of a kind. In fact, it was in this river that I caught my first sea trout. It was the 19th of July; my father, a fishing friend named Klaus and I were traveling to the River Karup. On the way there, Klaus provided some words of encouragement. “Amalie, this night, it’s going to be the night!”

So we tackled up and headed to the river. We arrived at “vridsted,”a fallen tree in the river, which Klaus assured me was the hot spot. He said “under that tree, there’s a fish.”  I proceeded to fish under the tree and BOOM, there it was, my first sea trout!  It was 55 cm long and weigh 2.5 kg (or in American terms 5 pounds and 5 ounces).  Not a huge fish, but it was the most beautiful fish I have ever seen; fully finned, fat and bright silver with stunning markings.

Since catching that fish, sea trout have become my favorite fish.  I love my visits to the Karup. The fishing is challenging but highly rewarding.

When I fish in the River Karup, I fish a double-handed 12ft, #6 rod.  With long grass banks and lots of debris to catch on, it allows you to make casts to places which would not be achievable with a single-handed rod. As for the flies, I like to use tube flies, normally between 4-7 cm long, predominantly using the colors green, black, orange and purple.

In my experience, those are the colors that catch the biggest fish. The biggest fly-caught fish in the River Karup weighed 12.7 kg and measured 96 cm. That is the real fish of my dreams!

Mostly, I fish in the evening or at night. When the sun is about to set, you must fish. That is when the big fish come out to play. You cast to the opposite bank, then it’s strip, strip, BOOM.

For me, one of the best things about fly fishing and fly tying is the time spent with other people who share my interests.

Here in Denmark we have a fantastic community where we all love fishing and fly tying. We can easily talk about fishing and fly tying all day long.

Half a year ago, I wrote a bucket list of six places that I would like to go fishing.