Timo Kontio

Posted on April 20, 2008

I was born in 1986 in Finland and have been living here all my life. I have always been interested in fishing but it wasn’t until I discovered the joys of fly fishing and fly tying that it became such a big part of my life. One of my best friends had been learning about fly fishing from his grandfather and he told me that I must try it out.

I requested a fly tying-kit from my parents for my 13th birthday and after that day I have been hooked to a hobby that will hopefully last for a lifetime. My birthday is in February so I had to wait for summer to test my flies in a local pond that has stocked rainbow trouts in it. It took a bit of casting practice to get my first fish with a fly that I had made myself but it was as rewarding as I had been promised.

I would then spend countless hours in the local library and at home learning everything that i could from the books I had available. Oliver Edwards’ Flytyers Masterclass was the book that fueled my interesting developing my tying skills to a more realistic and artistic way. Since I was so young that I couldn’t drive a car and no-one in my family fished I could make only couple fishing trips a year so I had a lot of time to try out different things in fly tying.

I read about fly tying competitions and admired the talent of the tiers and for some unknown reasons it made me think that I could do it also. After couple years of trying I got some second and third places in local tying competitions and wanted to try out internationals. It took me quite some time get some satisfacting results because the level in the big competitions is set up pretty high.

I think that my tying took another big turn when I moved to Espoo which is very close to Helsinki, the capital of Finland. After a short while I realized that I lived in the same building with Ari-Heikki Rintaniemi, who has won many international competitions especially in tying classic salmon flies. A-H teached me how he ties salmon flies and got me more interested in stretching my tying to that direction. I had been admiring those flies before but never really had the courage to tie them.

After some learning from Ari-Heikki it wasn’t long that I entered for the first time to the 2007 FQSA fly tying world championsihp and against all odds ended up winning two of the three categories I entered. I have also won medals from other competitions including Gold and bronze medal from World Tuscany Open in 2007 and gold medal from the British & International Fly tying Championship in 2008.

I hope to develop my tying even further and I’m looking for new things to improve myself. Lately I’ve been most interested in the history of fly tying and classic patterns but I’m also trying to become a better realistic fly tier as well. My main goal is to become a good overall tyer that can handle any pattern equally good.

Timo Kontio

Classic salmon fly • by Wordpress • Design by Funny videos Sponsored by Apply for a Credit Card | AllowProxy.com Free Proxy.