S6, Ep 49: Crafting Precision: Morten Valeur and the Evolution of Ahrex Hooks

Marvin Cash: Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by Morten Valeur, one of the founders of Ahrex Hooks. We take a deep dive into scandinavian fishing, fly tying, hook design and all things Ahrex. I think you're really going to enjoy this one. But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out. And we recently released our 800th episode, a huge shout out to all of our listeners, guests, and sponsors. We couldn't have done it without you, and your support means more to us than you will ever know. And we also recently released an interview only show - The Long haul With the Articulate Fly. So if you prefer to listen to the Articulate Fly without the phishing reports, just search for The Long Haul and your favorite podcatcher.

Now onto the interview. 

Well, Morten, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

Morten: Thank you, thank you having me.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to our conversation. And we have a tradition on The Articulate Fly. We like to ask all of our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

Morten: Well, it's, I grew up on a farm here in Denmark, and not far from that farm, there was a small pond. And the first memory I have from that pond, I think I was four years old. And that was with my dad. My dad is not a fisherman at all. I was not a fisherman at all. But he took me down there and I was allowed to fish for maybe half an hour or something like that. Then he got bored and want to go home. But after that, I'm quite sure that both my dad and mom got pretty irritated with me because I want to go down there all the time. At the time I was six, I just started to go down there alone. I can't understand why my parents let me do that. I wouldn't do that to my kids. But, it was another time. I'm 58 now, and I think back then you were allowed to do more than. I don't know. That's just my impression. When I was six years old, I was fishing down in that pond all summer. It's not like trout or anything. It was small. It was roaches. Not roaches, sorry. What do you call them? Small, shiny fish. Small bait fish, I would probably call it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, like, probably bream or perch or...

Morten: Exactly, perch. We had a bit of bream and, no pikes. There, but, that came later on. So it's just small fish but I was using my worms and a cane and just very basic equipment. So it's fantastic, fantastic memories, to be honest. And to this day, I still have it in, you know, it's part of my, you know, upbringing and it's, yeah, very important and very dear memories actually.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's funny you say that so you can't see it, but on the wall I've got a picture of me probably I'm maybe five or six with my grandfather fishing for trout on a cane pole and he's got the aluminum worm box on his belt and wearing his welly. So I completely get it. Yeah, it's great stuff.

Morten: And it seems like you never forget. You know, I think even in my fly fishing today all because you're so much into it as a kid I think a lot of what you learned back then you kind of have it with you even when you're fly fishing. The understanding of the fish how they move, how where they are all the you kind of, I never forget that and I still use it to this day, to be honest. It's like a 6th sense you kind of get when you're young and a kid, I think. At least that's my impression.

Marvin Cash: Well, I would tell you my kind of spending time in the industry. I think all of the people that we think of as being great are all bait gear and fly fishermen and they understand fish behavior and particularly, I mean, you know, this. We've talked fly design stuff. Like, you can't design predator flies if you don't know what fish are doing.

Morten: No, it's true. I totally agree.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. So, yeah. So, when did you come to the dark side of fly fishing?

Morten: Well, quite late, actually, to be honest. I was maybe 17, 18. I was using spinning gear for quite, quite a long time. Then I started working in a shop. It was not a fly shop but it was a shop where we sold sports equipment and fishing and hunting gear and all that. I think you'd call it all tackle, probably. And there was an older guy there was a fly fisherman and he introduced me to fly fishing and from then on it just, you know, took off. So it was quite late and, yeah, but I spent all my time on fly fishing just like being a kid again, to be honest. We spoke about before. It's just, you know, it's like starting all over just in fly fishing. I didn't know anything. I didn't know what to do? Needed to read books. Back then, it was all books. No, no YouTube, no instagram, no nothing. All books. And so bought a lot of books and, yeah, bought a lot of American magazines actually. Fly Fisherman was with me from that time. I bought every issue, was super expensive here in Denmark to get them. But, I've read I don't know how many issues of Fly Fishermen. I learned a lot from them back then. And back then it was, you know, all the, you know, the great, the great ones like Lefty Cray and Bob Klauser. And it was just, you know, amazing to read about these people and how they were fishing. And I learned a lot from…So, I have a feeling today, even though I grew up in Denmark, I'm fishing in Denmark. I think a lot of my, from where I learned my fly fishing from, was actually from the US because I was reading a lot of American magazines and books back then.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's an interesting thing because we're roughly the same age, and, you know, it's like fishing with grandparents, fishing with parents. You know, it's kind of funny because I try to tell my boys that, you know, it's like you literally got a newsletter in the mail and someone hand wrote your name on it and put it in the post and, you know, I think in some ways it's hurt us from a sports perspective. Cause I think people don't put the time in to kind of have the foundation of knowledge. And so they say, well, just tell me what to do or tell me what to buy. And I think, I think it really hurts, people. I mean, to the extent people want to be complete anglers, I think it really hurts their development. But then I think it's amazing. I was, I was online the other day, and I was shocked to see that Martin at the Global Fly Fisher just celebrated his 30th anniversary. And, I mean, he was one of the original guys on the Internet, right?

Morten: Yeah, he was.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, you know, kind of bridging it and so, you know, you know, you were doing it kind of the old school way of learning. Who are some of the people that, you know, because obviously, as I always say, it's been kind of downhill for the last 40 years, fly fishing. Who are some of the people who have kind of mentored you on your journey?

Morten: Well, from, apart, apart from the ones I mentioned in, like, the, The Great American Tyers and Fly Fishermen, I would say here in, in Denmark or maybe Scandinavia, we had a, a very important fly fisherman called Pippen Top Jacobsen, who's also an author. I think he wrote maybe seven, eight books. And he actually lived only like 15 miles from here. So in my later age, I got to know him and met him a few times. But all his books are almost like small bibles to me, especially on the dry fly fishing and the nymph fishing. That's what he was doing. And, so he's been a mentor. But even in spin, he was not another Danish guy, also a writer and author. But he was not fly fishing. Only, a guy called Jens Plough Hansen. I think most Europeans know him because he was very known for all his photographs. So his photographs, you see in a lot of different magazines. I'm not sure if they made it to the US, but at least over here, he was quite well known. And he became a good friend as well. But that was more like a fisherman mentor, not like maybe a fly fisherman mentor, but just the way he was thinking about fishing and life, for that matter. So I kind of really liked those two guys, Previn and Jens. They were mentors to me and a lot of other people, for sure. But if I look at the Danes, they are probably the two that I remember the best.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, just to kind of help. Like, I sort of have a little bit of a familiarity with sort of the Scandinavian fishing culture, because I think I mentioned to you that my wife lived in Denmark and her first husband was a Dane. And, so when I think about Danish fly fishing, I think about fishing for sea trout. And I think about, you know, it's a place, for example, like, where Blaine's predator flies are very popular. Like, that's a very part of that northern european fishing culture. But for, for Americans who just kind of think about how we do things, you know, how is kind of Danish and kind of Scandinavian fishing culture and fly fishing different than in the states?

Morten: Well, for sure, what you're mentioning with the sea trout, that counts for at least Denmark, the southern part of Sweden, northern part of Germany. I think we have a very strong. I think that's kind of the, you know, where it all started. When it comes to sea trout fishing in the salt, that's what we're doing. It's a saltwater game fish, actually, for us. It's in the rivers as well. But I think the saltwater fishing for sea trout is probably what's the most known. And so that differs a lot because you don't have that species that many places in the world. We have it here. And I know that travelers come here now just to fish for that. It's not because they're super big anything. I think just people like, you know, people have their bucket lists, and I guess the sea trout is ending up on that bucket list sometimes. But I would say, in general, if you talk about fly fishing in Scandinavia, in general, I would say we have the salmons, we have the sea trout, and we even have the pike. I need to mention that as well. And especially in Sweden, you're seeing a really strong community around the pike now on the fly. So it's, I think those three game fish are the most important ones here. And we see the perch as well come out. And I think, but I think in general, if you look at Scandinavians, they're very good fly casters, most of them. And I think it's because, at least in Denmark, you need to be a good caster if you're fishing in saltwater. And you need those long casts cast in hauling winds and all that. So you become a pretty good flycaster over here quite quickly. If you don't, you don't catch anything because we don't fish from boats. I think that's a big difference between the US and Europe. A lot of our fishing is wading. We're wading in saltwater and casting, not from boats. You could fish from boats, but nobody does it. So, I think that's a big difference. So good casters and a lot of good fly tyers, I must say.

Marvin Cash: And then, obviously, you've got real winter in Scandinavia. So is travel, like, I noticed on your blog that you've got a lot of people in the company. That they're chasing bonefish right now is kind of more deliberate kind of travel to kind of go places where it's warm or different. Is that more part of the fly fishing culture? 

Morten: It has become that. I wouldn't say, if we look maybe, I don't know, 15 years back, maybe it was not a big thing. But the last 1015 years, traveling has become quite big for Scandinavians as well. And the thing, it all started out with you probably know the guy who founded Loop tackle, swedish guy, and he, Christopher Sherbert his name, he actually, when he started that company, it was only rods and reels and lines and all that. They did a very good job. They had their own kind of feeling to it all. But he started traveling and he actually developed Loop into almost a travel agency as well, which was quite early at that time. But I think there is, he started all that traveling and I think now it's, you know, everybody, not everybody, a lot of people are traveling. I'm not one of them, to be honest, but a lot of people do, especially during the long, cold winters. t's a good, it's a good escape.

Marvin Cash: It's interesting too, you know, to see that because you see because of the profitability in travel. Like, you see far bank has purchased a travel company. Like you're seeing brands realize they can make a lot more money selling travel than they can selling gear.

Morten: Yeah, yeah, it's true. And it's..Yeah, I agree.

Marvin Cash: So you took up fly fishing when you were 17. When did you get the fly tying bug?

Morten: Well, at the same time almost. It's because the older gentleman worked in the shop. He was a fly tyer as well. And we sold fly tying materials and hooks and all that back then. So, I started that as well. I was not very good at it, to be honest. It took me some time to learn and I've tied a lot of. But I think, I guess that's, I guess that counts for everybody. But I really liked it. So, yeah, I took it up the same time. So I've been tying ever since, actually. It's, still not as much as I would like to these days, but I'm doing it quite frequently.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And so what was your first vise and do you remember the first fly you tied?

Morten: I remember the fly. It was a miggi fin. It's, I don't know if, how popular that is in the US, but it's over here. It was kind of a stable pattern for many, many years, both for sea trout and brown trout in the streams and all that. So, that was the first one I tied. It's pretty simple fly. So it's just, you know, silver body and I think calf tails for the, for the wing. So that was the first one. And I think the vise I had, we had a Danish vise company back then called Danweiss. I think it was one of their vises. I'm quite sure it was. I can't remember exactly, but I'm quite sure it was actually.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And what do you tie on today?

Morten: Today I tie on a Regal. Yeah, regal wise, I really like that sturdy American, a little bit on the heavy side. And, you know, it's not, I know a lot of people like the Rinsettis. I think they're beautiful. I like the Rinsettis as well, but for me, the Regals are just bump proof, and they work all the time. I really appreciate tying on them. I've done it for many, many years now, actually.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. It's an interesting thing. There's certainly a pocket. I'm sure you've seen this because you've done the show circuit here in the States. Like, they're incredibly popular in the northeastern United States.

Morten: Oh, yeah.

Marvin Cash: I mean, people tie on those, but, yeah, obviously the Renzettis. And, it's interesting to see, and I would imagine, too, since you tie bigger flies, you like the jaws on the regal.

Morten: Exactly.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and so, you know, that gets us…I apologized to you before we started recording that we weren't going to talk about pike very much, because I just ran out of time and space. But I'm going to ask you your favorite fly flies to tie. And I suspect they're pike flies.

Morten: Oh, yeah. The ones I still tie myself is actually my pike flies, so. And it's not, it's nothing special. It’s actually built on the same thinking as Bob Popovich, his bocktail flies and bocktail deceivers and all that. So it's not my own creations, because he's done a phenomenal job on the pawbach fly. So I really like the way he's doing it. I'm just trying my best to make them look like what he is doing. So, they work really well from our pike fishing over here. They got the right shape, and most of them are black. I have..Sorry to say that, but black flies work really well.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's all good. And I was kind of curious, too, because I met you at kind of a really kind of niche, kind of fly tying event. But I also know you were doing other shows in the states. Who are some of the tyers that you follow? And who are kind of some of the people you just mentioned, Bob. But who are some of the other folks that have kind of influenced you as a tyer and people that you just kind of watch that you think are doing really neat things?

Morten: Yeah, and I think if I look at what I'm doing now, I would say people like Garner Brammer is a great inspiration. Bob Popovich, for sure. Klaus, are his flies, but that's more on the traditional side. But he's still really, really good flies. And then you have an English guy, Paul Monaghan. He's a great, great tyer as well. I think all these are in kind of the same tradition or the way they're doing things, but they're tweaking it a little bit, all of them. So I always get new ideas from these guys. And for sure, some of the Swedish guy, Andreas Sanderson, great tyer we have over here. He's quite well known in the US as well. He's part of the whole trout predator scene and made a few. He created some of his own patterns. Very, very good fly tyer. So, yeah, Andreas and Paul and Garner and Bob, for sure. The old master.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, too, with Gunner, because he's kind of. He's like the young beast fly generation. So, like, he's really trying to work with kind of Bob's flies. Yeah, you know, it's. Whereas you see, like, I kind of. Because I'm still kind of playing with this book idea, and you kind of see the, like, Russ Madden articulation, and then you see the Blaine articulation platforms and kind of see who's tying off of those. But it is interesting to see, you know, Gunner is really working really hard just tying beast flies, right?

Morten: Yeah, and I think what I like, I'm sure. And he also recognizes Bob, for sure, because that's where we all got it from. But I think what Gunner is adding to it is he's very good at explaining on how he does it, even down to the smallest detail. I really enjoyed watching some of his videos and going into all the niche, niche details. And that's what you want to do if you're not very good at it. As you know, I need to learn. I'm not a super tyer, but I'll get it right eventually. But, then getting a few tips and tricks from guys like Gunner and Paul Monaghan, that's just worth a lot, to be honest.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and to go back, you mean, so different than reading a book, right. And it's literally anywhere in the world, and it's an amazing thing. You can find your people, and you know, it's an amazing thing. Like, on the predator fly thing, I can remember doing classes, and we would have people from South Africa, you know, and it's just like, they're like, how can we get the materials? It's like, well, we can't help you with that, but we can get the Internet to you. Right? So.

Morten: Yeah. And I think that's, I think that's the good thing about, you know, books had a limitation today. You can sit in anywhere in the world and learn from the best quite easily and quite quickly and also, that's one of the reasons why you see so many good tyers these days. And some of them are not even fishing, but they're extremely good tyers. That's an interesting thing. And that's thanks to YouTube and Instagram and even TikTok, maybe for the younger generation than us.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, well, I mean, it's amazing. Like, if we were doing this the old school way in the interview, we would do it on the phone and it would probably cost two or three hundred dollars just to have the phone call. Right?

Morten: Yeah, exactly.

Marvin Cash: So I always like to ask tyers, Morten, that they all, almost every tyer that I know has some kind of goofy, weird tool that no one else really uses that they can't live without, particularly if they're tying predator fly stuff. And I was curious if you have something like that. 

Morten: Ah, goofy tool. No, to be honest, Marvin, I don't think I have. I got my straws, you know, to pull, push back the deer hair and all that. But I think that's, that's more common today than it was maybe ten years ago. Everybody has that these days. I have that these days. So, no, I don't think I have any special.

Marvin Cash: Nothing that lives in a craft store in Denmark or like ladies nail polish or anything like that?

Morten: No, I'm sorry. Maybe I'm old school that way. I don't know.

Marvin Cash: You know, it's, so Morten, doing the research for the for the interview, you know, I think you spent probably close to 35 years in the industry. And I was kind of curious, you know, when did you decide that you wanted to make a living in fishing?

Morten: Hmm. Mhm. Yeah, that's a good question. I started in this shop I mentioned earlier in ‘85, which was not just fishing, but I was working in the fishing department as part of my job, not full time, because it was not that big a department, but that was kind of my…So it's almost. Is that 40 years now? Uh, yes. Sorry.

Marvin Cash: No, I always try to under guess on stuff like that. Right?

Morten: I kind of like. I like that, Marvin. Well, so I started there and I worked there for six years, which was a great experience. And then I studied for a while and traveled a little bit. And when I came back from the traveling, I don't know, you know, it's a little bit like the bumblebee that they don't know they can't fly. But I kind of got the idea that I wanted to have a company that sold fly tying materials. I thought I could live out of that. But if anybody asked me today, if it was a good idea to do that, I'd probably say no, because it's not that easy. But I think we kind of lucky at the time. We had some new materials coming up at that point. I think that was just when Arctic Fox started out. I don't know if you remember that, but that was actually back in 19, 1991, 92. Arctic Fox was coming onto the scene. Everybody was using bugtail, calf tails and all that. Then these arctic fox tail came out and that actually started out in this area. Norway, Denmark was among the first ones because we have all the, you know, and Finland as well, we have all the, what do you call it, the fox farms and all that. So we got the tails from them and started dying and selling them. So that was actually the door opener for me as a wholesale company, going to the shops. That was the thing they bought from me. They didn't buy the flash, they didn't buy the…All the other stuff, but the foxtail they wanted. And that was actually where it all started with the foxtail.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And did that start at The Fly Company or is that a?

Morten: Yeah, that was The Fly Company and we started that company in ‘95. As I said, it was a bit of, you know, a dream, but maybe not the best idea. It took a long time to make that work and even just earn some money on it, but, eventually it took off and we got a place in the industry, but it took some time. We didn't have any money. I started from scratch. We had a very small credit in the bank that was also no old money, anything. We started totally from scratch. No rich parents either. But it was a good, very good experience. I wouldn't be out without it because you learn a lot from, from a tough start. And it maybe took us, I don't know, the first five, six years was…It was struggling every year. But, you know, if you keep on doing it and you try to do it well, eventually people will, you know, follow and buy some products from you and you build a reputation. You may be on quality and, you know, delivery speed or whatever you want it build a company on. And, yeah, so that was ‘95.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And you started that with your brother, right?

Morten: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my brother is still…Actually, my brother is still at. The fly company is still existing, it's still a Danish company and it's still…They still sell fly time materials and my brother is still working there, actually, so he's been even longer than me.

Marvin Cash: Was it helpful for the business? I guess when the EU came into existence in terms of the ease of moving stuff around on the continent?

Morten: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Very, very important, I would say. It's just very easy, and it still is very good. And even buying things within the EU for us, we had Vineyard as a, supplier. We even supplied them as well. Back then, just shipping product back and forth between UK and Denmark was very easy. Now it's become more difficult again because they decided leaving EU. But that's another story.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, well, we won't talk about currency and all that sort of stuff.

Morten: Let’s keep politics out of this.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, yeah. So I guess you sold, I guess, your interest in the Fly Company and started Ahrex in 2016. And I was really curious because there are lots, not a lot, but there are, I don't know, a half a dozen long standing hook companies in fishing. I was curious, what opportunity you saw in the hook space that you wanted to take advantage of?

Morten: That's a very good question. To be honest, we started Ahrex at the time, we had the Fly Company as well, my brother and I. So Ahrex was actually part of the Fly Company in the beginning. And to be honest, we didn't see a lot of opportunity. But what we were missing, year after year, we were distributing Partridge, Tiemco, Varivas and Kamasan in the Fly Company. And we had issues every spring to get the shrimp hooks we needed for the sea trout flies, basically, it was always sold out in March and we needed them. In April or May and June, we couldn't get them. And that was the same thing every year. I will not mention any brands here, but we had the same issue every year. So my brother and I decided, why don't we just make the shrimp hook? Because we really need that swim. We can make a hook. It can't be that difficult. And then they started researching ans we found a design we liked and said, okay, we'll make two models and that's all. And it needed a name. And we came up with the name Ahrex. But we didn't have a, you know, in the beginning, we didn't have a long strategy, anything like that. We built this into branded a big brand in its own, anything like that. It was just to fill the gap of hooks we couldn't get. And then when we started introducing the brand, people started right away, people started asking us, why…Why don't you make this hook or that hook? I said, well, maybe we could do that as well. And then from there, we decided to, okay, if we want to do that. We want to do it probably. Probably. And then we started develop more like a more general thinking about what is it we want to do? Do you have more series of hooks? How should we work with that? Do we need social media? How would you do things in general but all the time? And to this day, actually, I think the most important things for us is to have hooks in stock at all times. That's actually the basic things for us. That's the secret. To be honest with the Ahrex, we have hooks in stock all the time. We've never run out. And I think for a lot of people, both tyers. But even for shops, for commercial operations, like, you know, Blaine, good example. If he can't get the hook he need for his fly in time, he will be out of flies when the season starts. And he will never go back to a company where he can't get the hook he needs for his flies because he will be out of business, at least lose a lot of business. So having hooks in stock at all times, that's actually the secret of Ahrex. The rest is just icing on the cake. All the social media and people like that, and we love it to make it so it's for us. That's the hobby for me around it. Photographing all the beautiful flies and posting that on social media, I really, like, enjoy that. But the basic thing is having hooks in stock at all times. It’s very simple, to be honest. It is.

Marvin Cash: But you know its an interesting thing you say that. Because we have that conversation all the time, and I think consumers may not understand that if you miss the delivery window, you're not late a month, you're late a year.

Morten: Exactly.

Marvin Cash: And that’s not great. I would say the interesting thing for Ahrex, your first hook was your gameras hook right? Isn't that your shrimp hook? Yeah. You know, it's been pretty amazing to me. I mean, you know, even with COVID you know, eight years in, I mean, incredibly popular, very wide adoption, like, I know, you know, Blaine is using them for his flies. There are other people that are doing that. But, you know, in particular, in the predator fly space, you guys, I would say, are probably the dominant hook manufacturer there. You know, how do you think that happened so quickly? Because there's got to be a little bit more than just having the hooks, right?

Morten: Yeah. True. When it comes. Yeah. Having many hooks is one thing. That's actually maybe the base of everything, to be honest. I think working with a lot of very experienced fly fishermen and fly tyers around the world, that's the other part of it. Working with Garner Brahma is one of them. Paul Monaghan I mentioned as well. So we have got a lot of inspiration for a lot of very good tyers and good fly fishermen. As you said in the beginning, it's very hard to create a good fly if you're not fishing yourself. You need to understand the basic, you know, basic things about how a fly should look, how it should swim in the water and all that. And if you can do that, you can also just see, okay, if I had this hook made like that, that would make my fly even better. And that's…I think we've been good listeners as well. And for sure, we've been designing a few models ourselves as well, because we are fly fishermen and fly size ourselves. But we've been listening a lot to a lot of other people all over the world, especially from the US. And just to mention, one more very important part of Ahrex is actually Steve Silverio, who quite early on reached out and said, I want to work with you guys. I think you are onto something here. And he has been a very important part for us. Of the team in the US, to be honest, so. And Steve, being who he is and knowing everybody and, you know, being able to talk to everybody has been very, very good for us, for sure. He's a good friend now as well.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, he's, he's a piece of work. I spent some time with him in Michigan, but I didn't drink any rum with him, so.

Morten: You shouldn’t, never.

Marvin Cash: So, you know, it's interesting because, I mean, you've got a long history in the industry. Was there anything that kind of pops into your mind as, like, a greatest challenge or surprise as you built out the hook company, something that you didn't expect to have happen? That happened?

Morten: Well, I don't think there was anything I didn't expect. I think what we all got hit by was the COVID period of time. I think that's actually. But nobody could foresee how that would affect our industry and every industry, to be honest. I think what we experienced at that time was, as everybody else did, was longer and longer lead times. When I was ordering a hook, it would take almost a year to get it. And that was very, very challenging. I was thankful that we had such a big stock, which helped us out, but even we ran out for sure, like everybody else did at that period, because we couldn't just order a new batch of hooks because everybody was so busy at that point, as you know, fly fishing and fishing in general just got super big. All outdoor activities got super big. So. And, you know, getting things transported from one place to another was a challenge. So everything. But that's, you know, that's more a general thing that it is. Because I think, just to get back to your question, I haven't been that surprised. I've been very positively surprised about how, and especially Americans reach out to small companies and really want to help out. And that's, for us being able to speak directly to some of the tyers in the US at a very early point really helped us out to point us in the right direction. But that's another positive side. I didn't expect that, to be honest. I would have thought that it would be more difficult. But, quite early, we got requests, and people want to try the hooks and what it was and all that. So I really appreciate that from the beginning. So that was. But that's only on the positive side. I haven't experienced anything on the negative side, to be honest.

Marvin Cash: And it's interesting because I know how important, there's really no substitute for being on the water, and so I know how important that feedback is in terms of perfecting hook designs, and that's. We'll talk about it later. You know like Bob Klauser finally has exactly the perfect hook that he wants for his clouser minnows and Popovix as well. And I know you're working on hooks with Blaine, but, you know, for people that may not know, you know, what are some of the, you know, like, steel features, hook point features that make your hooks different than, say, like Daiichi's and Tayyimko's and other hooks that are out there, just to kind of help educate the consumer when they look and they just see a big wall of hooks and, like, holy cow. 

Morten: Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of hooks to choose from these days, to be honest, I don't think we ever had as many as we have now. I think. What do you call it? Characteristics. Yeah, I think, there's two ways of doing hooks. You can say you can look the way the steel behaves. You have if you take a Japanese made hook, it is, if you take it and try to bend it out, you can't do that. It's very, very, very strong. But it's…Maybe it'll become a little bit brittle as well. Our hooks will bend out. That's what part of the design of it is how they work. So our hooks, some of them might break. I'm not 100% sure about all the hooks, but most of them will bend out and not break. I think Japanese hooks will probably break but never bend out. And I can't say that one thing is better than the other. I think a lot of people appreciate that they don't bend out and rather have them break. If that happens. It very seldom happens. It's not like that, but I think it's two different ways of thinking of hooks and how they should perform. So it's more like a, I wouldn't call it a religion, but I think it's a belief. We believe in hooks that bends out, not break. And then you have the other things. The other thing is that if you look at, a lot of the other designs, a lot of hooks have a needle point, like a very, Just another very, very, very sharp when you have a needle point. And even sharper than our hooks, actually, our cyber is. Maybe it's not..It's very difficult to explain just in words, but if. If you look at our hook, if you look at our points very close up, you see they have, like. They're on a needle, you know, look like a needle, but then right at the point, they kind of, you know, becomes more…What do you call that? Like, more like a. Not as a needle, but it continues all the time. But it just, like. It gets a little.

Marvin Cash: It's slightly rounded off at the point, right?

Morten: Yeah, slightly rounded off. And there's one thing about that. Yeah, that's a good explanation, I think what you can do with our hooks, it's quite easy to sharpen where you have a needle point. If the needle point break, it is very difficult to get them super sharp again. You can always sharpen our hooks. I don't know if people do that anymore, to be honest, or they just take out a new fly of the box. So maybe we're kind of old school. So, hooks that bends out and a point you can sharpen. That's the two very important things on our hooks. And you see that on all our hook models. And I wouldn't say that they set us apart. You see other companies doing the same thing. But that's, at least that's what we, that's our features, you can call it.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting you say that, because I've got hunting knives that you can't even really sharpen yourself anymore. The steel's so hard.

Morten: Exactly.

Marvin Cash: And so you literally have to mail them back, which seems kind of goofy to me. Right. You know, because I was a kid, I used to, you know, get the stones out in the oil and sharpen the knives. And now they're like, it's really. The steel is too hard. So once you lose the edge, you got to send it back to the factory.

Morten: Yeah. But I know a lot of. I've spoken to a lot of the Danish sea trout fishermen that some of my best friends don't want to use Ahrex because they want the gamakatsu where they have the needle point. I say, why do you want that? Why don't you use our hooks? Well, I like the needlepoint and. But I say if the point is, you know, it's not sharp anymore, I just take a new fly. Okay. It's just, you know, it's just a way you different. Different ways of thinking. It's not like nothing is wrong here and nothing is right. It's just. What do you prefer as a fly fisherman? A fly tyer. And we believe in our, you know, way of doing it. But that's ours.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, well, it's funny, people get worked up. And I was like, gosh, people, it's just fishing. It's not politics. Right?

Morten: Right, exactly. Yeah, that's my. Yeah, I totally agree with you on that, Marvin, because don't let it be become a religion. I think we should have fun with what we're doing and there's room for everybody here.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And it's interesting back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the interview. You know, I think a lot of anglers don't truly appreciate what the hook brings to the fly in terms of weighting, gap, point, straight eye, bent eye. I know that's a super broad set of things to think about. But I think a lot of anglers don't think about why we're doing what we do. And I think that's one of the things that makes all that feedback you're getting from these guys on the water. But just can you kind of give like a 30 thousand foot view to anglers about like how those things come together to kind of make the right hook for the right job?

Morten: I think, I think the easiest way to explain that is actually probably the conversation we had because with Andreas Anderson, I think some tyers are really, really nerdy about this. And I didn't, to be honest, when we started all this, I didn't know that. I was not thinking like a hook designer or anything like that. I was just thinking as a fisherman. When speaking to Andreas Anderson the way he was thinking about how the hook should look, how it should keel, how far, how far back on the shank he could tie before, you know, before the bends kind of starts and all that. And it was down to, like, millimeters sometimes. No, it's still not right. And the point how. How far from the from the point to the, to the, to the barb and all that, how long that should be. So, being very meticulous about it, he was designing the hooks like he would for his flies. And for sure, he was part of a whole, I would say, a generation, almost, or maybe a group of new streamer fly tyers. Ross Madden is one of them as well. He's a friend of Andreas as well. So that group of people, they had a very set mind on how the hooks should look, and they really, really work. So it's, so when it comes to hook design, seen from as you said, from a 30,000ft perspective, it's a lot of small, small things that make the changes and even how maybe you. Sometimes you buy a hook and then you balance it. I know a lot of tyers do that these days. They put lead underneath, on top. And a lot of things, I would say the last ten years, I think blind tying has changed tremendously, probably more than ever. Blaine is one of them. You know, starting out, you know, just his way of thinking. That's one part of it. All the shanks and how the fly moves in the water. So, you know, I would say maybe more than ten years ago, but let's say. Let's say 15 years ago, I think a lot of people looked at flies as flies, like, you know, like non fishermen thinks of a fly, they think about it, something flying in the air and all that, you know, it's a big difference now. I think there's no limits anymore. I think you could do whatever you want and people will, the discussion about, is that a fly or not? I think that discussion has almost vanished. I don't know if you agree on that, but I don't see it anymore out there that much, you know. Oh, that's not a fly. It's more like a spoon. No.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I just come back to, it's fishing, and then I just go fish.

Morten: Exactly. But I think a lot of people are like that now. They don't…If you fish with a fly rod, it's fly fishing. What fly you use? Well, that doesn't maybe really matter. And that has sparked a lot of creativity out there, and Blaine is a very good example of that thinking. The way he does. And Ross, Madden and Ray Sanders, when we talk, especially all the big predator flies for a musky and pike and all. That's a lot of development there. And we borrow from the, from the spin industry as well, for sure. We do.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and I think it's interesting, too, right? Because, you know, we've seen how you had, you now have the ability to produce almost an infinite number of hook options cost effectively because you can design them inexpensively. You don't need large runs anymore like you used to. And it takes the time. Whereas, you know, if you talk to Blaine, he'll tell you about spending hours in his garage cutting shanks.

Morten: Yeah, right.

Marvin Cash: And now you're like, oh, I want one that looks like this, and someone's going to make it for you. So then you can go spend time fishing and perfecting the fly and not playing around with bolt cutters in your garage, yeah.

Morten: And one, one important thing you said there is the minimum order quantities we need to do. The hooks are quite expensive still, I would say, compared to a lot of other things. But you can run them in relatively small quantities. And that's the important part of it. That's the reason why you can do all these crazy designs. And if people ask me, can you do a hook like that? Yeah, we can. If you think there's enough, you know, enough, need for this, we can do it because the runs are not that big. It might, because for sure, if you do a super big run, the hook, price per hook will be lower. But then you'd probably not never do that hook because you don't need a 100,000 in one size. Maybe you only need 20 or 30. And that's doable today.
Marvin Cash: Yeah.

Morten: It wasn't like that, like ten years ago. I think that's huge competition as well, to be honest.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and so, for folks that aren't familiar, tell us a little bit about kind of the design process, because I think we were talking in Michigan, and you kind of have a notebook with pictures and how you kind of move from that and, you know, to bring a fly to market and kind of what that process looks like and how long it takes.

Morten: I think I could use a quite pressed example we have right now. The hook is not even on the market. That might be more fun to talk about, to be honest. It started out with an idea that we wanted to remake, actually, some of the classic, dry fly you can use for all the classic Catskill patterns. And that's not an easy task. You can stir up a lot of people when you try to do a…So you need to talk to the right people, and that's where it all starts and put them together. In this case, it was one from the US, one from Europe, and one from the UK and one from Denmark. And they sat together and kind of discussed, how should that hook look like? And a lot of these three guys know alot about the history. They have the old hooks from the 1910 and 1890 or whatever, and they look at that. Even back then, there was no one right design. That's what it…Just the perception of how that hook should look like. Then gradually they come up with something that, okay, it should look like this. Then we do the drawings, send them to the factory, make, let them make a sample so they can have a look at it and try to tie on it, which is very important when it comes to classic looking, classic looking hooks - for classic looking flies, they need to tie it as well. And, and that's not even on the market yet. Then we get it, and they decide, okay, this is the right design. Then we do the ordering, and then we'll probably have the hooks within three months or something like. So from, from the start to the finished hook, this will take, you know, until the hook is on the market. It would probably take at least a year from the first idea. Sometimes we could do it much faster. If we have a very clear picture of what that hook should look like, then we can probably do it in six months or something like that. But normally it's longer.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and I know you relatively recently, you've got specialty hooks. We were talking about Bob Clauser and Bob Popovix. How is that design process different? Is it easier? Because they have very, very specific ideas of what they want, and so you don't have to iterate the design process as much.

Marvin Cash: No, true. They have a very clear picture because that's their…In both the Bobs case, they have a very, very clear, they've been doing the flies and the tying for so many years. So that's very, very easy. But even just to talk about. I think Klaus was very easy because his flies been out there for so many years. I think in Popovich's case, he always felt that he didn't have exactly the right hook. So there we had to do some small changes, especially on the size of the hookeye. He wanted a slightly bigger than normal because he wanted to be able to use a wire and things like that and maybe a thicker leader. And we didn't think about that. That was Bob's input, and we made those small changes, and that's because it's not a, you know, a normal thing to do for the hook manufacturer. You need to let them know on how to make that hook bigger and all that. So it took a little bit longer time with his hook design, but still, it was pretty easy because he had some of the same idea, because he's the father of many of these very - all the big streamers. He had the same idea about having a long shank, where you have,  from Shank to the bend, it comes quite abruptly, so he has a lot of space to tie on. And that's the same like Andrea said on his stream of flies, inspired by Bob, for sure. So everybody's kind of looking at what he has been doing. So now, Bob was, Popovich was easy, as well. We just, for us, when we worked with people like Klaus and Popovich, it's very, very important for us that we hit it right, because the worst thing that could happen is that we make a hook and they really don't like it. That would be awful.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, that would be very, very, very bad.

Morten: Very unfortunate.

Marvin Cash: Do you have any other kind of upcoming product releases you can share with us? 

Morten: Apart from the classic, couple of classic fly hooks and hopefully the hook with Blaine when we get time to sit down and do that one. That's the one, the three hooks we're working on right now. And to be honest, we haven't been working on Blaine's hooks yet. We've just been talking about it, but hopefully it will play out.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting, too, because I was kind of…I've watched your hooks kind of through the years and doing time classes and things, and it's interesting to see that you kind of almost have an inverted product development catalog, where you did specialty hooks first, and now you're building out the more traditional hooks. Right?

Morten: Yeah. I think that came out of the whole idea in the beginning that we needed to fill some gaps, and we just kept doing that in the beginning. And then, as you said, eventually we got around to do the hooks everybody needs as well. But I think we maybe got known for doing the goofy stuff.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. But I would say one of the great things, and I think, Daiichi has this, too, is if you go to your website, you've got the chart so that people can go and see, oh, well, I like to tie on a TMCO 100. What's the analog Ahrex hook Right. And that's super helpful. I mean, like you said, they're all still different. Like, the wire gauge may be different, the gap might be different, but, it's always helpful. Kind of back to what we started about at the beginning, people were like, well, I don't have a TMC 100. And I was like, well, do you have a Daiichi whatever? And they're like, oh. I was like, it works. Like, what are you looking for? Long shank, you know, thin wire hook. So I think that's a great thing for people to check out. Morten, is there anything else you want to share with our folks before I let you go and wrap up your work day and go have dinner?

Morten: Well, I would say one thing, and that that's actually very important for me to say. It's, it's, even though I've been in this industry, as you said, or maybe I said for almost 40 years, I really still enjoy every day. It's amazing still to meet people out there like we did in Ypsilanti a couple of months back. It's just meet tyers, meet fly fishermen. And I think it will never grow old. I've never been in this industry to be either rich or make a lot of money. It's a lifestyle for me, and I think I'm not the only one in this industry. Wheels like this. I think a lot of people like Blaine is one of them as well. And I know a lot of people, they in this because they really, really like fly fishing and love fly fish and fly tying. And I really hope the new one, young ones, coming into the industry are thinking like this. For sure, you need to make a living. You need to put food on you, on the table, and provide for your family. But at the end of the day, it's all about the passion for what we are doing that's practicing and flying.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting you say that, because I always say that I think the fly fishing community is one of the most generous communities in the sporting world.

Morten: Yeah, I agree. Sharing is a big thing. And even on social media, I always get, like, if you look at Instagram, for example, where you see a lot of tyers sharing their, their flies and all that, it's almost never any politics in there. It's always about the hobby. And it's almost like, if you dare to write anything with politics regarding politics, you'll not be blamed…But it's not a good thing to do, and I really, really enjoy that. There's just still a few places where you actually just can share your love for, for something you really like to do. Instead of ending up in bad discussions about who's the best president or whatever. Just, we should tie flies.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. But, you know, what I would say is, like, I know you're a very accomplished photographer, and if you look at your website and if you look at your YouTube channel and your social media, you have great content, right? It's really beautifully produced. I think you're tying videos in terms of helping people learn to tie, like, you know, all the materials, everything's great. You know, I think people should, should check them out and I'll drop links to all that stuff in the show notes. You know, I guess in the United States, I guess hairline is your distributor here, so it's not like you have a lot of retail outlets. But I guess if you're not in the states, go to your website and you've got all of your international dealers. I would imagine, probably your social media channels and your website's the best way to kind of learn more about the hooks?

Morten: Oh, yeah. The website is always updated on what we are doing. And maybe, I would say maybe the strongest we have is YouTube and especially Instagram, because that's where I can play with the photographs. As you said, photography is my other big passion, apart from fly fishing. I really enjoy doing that. I photograph a lot of flies, I can tell you.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I was going to say you need another more expensive hobby, like shotguns. Right? So you get really expensive shotguns, and then you'll have three really expensive hobbies and maybe throw in sports cars and you'll be done. So…You know, I'll drop links to all those. And I know, too, you know, even though you're a danish based company, you spend a lot of time in the United States on the show circuit, so people can look forward to seeing you at the International Fly Tying Symposium. I think you've done a lot of the fly fishing shows, so if they're curious, you know, they'll be able to find you maybe in the hairline booth next year or somewhere like that.

Morten: We hope so. We haven't decided on next year, but I'm quite sure that we will be there, so. And I really enjoy that, it's always good to meet people. I have all this respect for social media, but it doesn't beat meeting up in real life. That's what we should do even more often, to be honest. It's good.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, 100%. Well, I appreciate you spending so much time with me, and it's been a lot of fun, and I'm glad, glad we had a chance to sit down and talk.

Morten: My pleasure, Marvin. Thank you for having me.

Marvin Cash: Take care.

Morten: Take care.

Marvin Cash: Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcaster of your choice. Tight lines, everybody.