Paul Van De Sande - Heist-op-den-Berg (B)

Paul was born in 1961 in Heist-op-den-Berg (a small town in Flanders, Belgium), and still lives there with his wife Nicole and their 19-year old daughter Yasmien.

He learned fly tying in 1990 after meeting Jan Mertens, who became his tutor. The year after that, they started fly fishing together and have been fishing ever since for all kinds of fresh- and saltwater species.

In 1993 he got the opportunity to represent Swan products, a Danish wholesaler of fly tying materials, after 5 years doing this part time he started to work full time for them, until two years later, when he bought their fly tying department and VDS Fly fishing Tackle and the brand Fly Scene were born.

As a fly fisher and thanks to his profession, Paul has fished from Alaska, USA over the British island to almost every country in Western Europe. Every year in october he does some professional guiding in Austria on the famous grayling River, the big Drau. Every year during this two week trip he designs new patterns to represent the aquatic life graylings are feeding on. He has been tying flies on different festivals over Europe in the last 15 years and for him, this is a time for meeting old friends and sharing techniques and knowledge.

Mitch Pans - Tienen (B)

Mitch started flyfishing when he was just 8 years old on his home River, the Semois. As he got older, other rivers where visited, also the first steps of reservoir fishing where a fact. Being mobile is very important if you don’t have a lot of options close to home. So when he turned 18 and had his first car, fishing was his only interest. Around that time he changed fishing clubs and started to focus on reservoir and competition fly fishing. Surrounded by some excellent mentors he perfected his still water skills and even fished a few podium places! Also the big blue sea had taken his interest. So the last few years he has spend many summer day at our North sea coast, fishing for Sea Bass. Off course he also keep on fishing rivers and lakes and always plans his holiday close to prime fishing spots like the Loue (france), the Weisse Traun (Germany) or The Ebro Delta (Spain). Giving casting and tying demo’s for quite a while, he works fulltime at VDS flyfishing tackle for almost 4years now. 

Although he has been fishing for 20 years I still have some dream fish I want to catch: Bone fish , Tarpon, Baracuda, Baramundi, Steelhead, Permit, Huchen, Sailfish, King salmon, Roosterfish, Grouper, Giant Trevally, Striper, Huge Patagonian seatrout, Musky, Dog Salmon, Pink Salmon, Yellowfin Tuna, … .

Still a long way to go. Tight Lines!

Marc Volkaerts - Heist-Op-Den-Berg (B)

Coming soon!

Jan Mertens - Herentals (B)

Jan started fishing at age 6, but only discovered fly fishing when he was 30 years old. At the same time, he started fly tying, and now ties all kinds of flies (except traditional salmon flies), mostly for his own needs.

He has tied on fairs in France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium, and up till now has caught over 25 different species all over Europe. For the last 15 years, he went to Ireland every year to fish on the famous loughs and rivers. His homeriver is a little stream in Germany near the Belgian border.

Jurgen De Ridder - Erpe-Mere (B)

Coming soon!

Bram Jansen - Lier (B)

Bram was born in 1982 in Turnhout, and has been fishing since he was a little boy, when he went to the river Cèze every holiday. However, he has only started flyfishing when he moved to Lier with his girlfriend 4 years ago, and discovered Fly Only fly fishing club in Kessel. Since then, flyfishing has become an addiction, and Bram has fished in Belgium, Germany, France, Croatia, the USA and Canada.

Peter Joest - Hilden (D)

Peter was born in 1958 and is currently working as a mechanic in the University Hospital of Düsseldorf.

Since his childhood he's been an enthusiastic angler but started flyfishing and flytying only at the age of 35 years. Inspired by a report about a very special squid pattern which was tied by Jean-Louis Teyssie he found his own style. With the help of a friend from his club, Peter created a special tubing braid which is called "Twinkletube". This material makes it easy to tie flies from very small to very big sizes. Meantime this tying style has been established. 

At his club and at fishingshops he gives lessons in flytying and at flyfishing shows around the world, he has proven his knowledge successfully.  His favorite patterns are saltwaterflies like shrimps, squids and streamers for seatrouts and seabasses which you can see on his website.

Stefan Bauer- Coburg (D)

Stefan was born in 1968 in Franconia, Germany.  At the age of 13, he started flyfishing and fly tying in his local fishing club in Coburg. Since 1994, he is a fly fishing purist and has visited many countries to flyfish for different species of fish. His favourite is fly fishing for sea trout at the Baltic coast in Denmark.

In 2005, he wrote his first article for the international fly fishing magazine ‘Der Fliegenfischer’. Some of his stories have been published in the last years, and he still writes for the oldest fly fishing magazine in Europe.

With his own artificial fly patterns, he has won fly tying competitions such as the ‘Mustad Scandinavian Open’, the ‘Slovenian Open’ and the ‘German open’. In 2008, he joined the Fly Scene Pro Team, and in 2010, he was a member of the World Team of Vision Flyfishing (Finland).

It’s a good feeling for him to teach the youth to fly fishing and tying in his fishing club and in the ‘Hunting and Fishing Museum’ in Castle Tambach. Young people are very interested about new fishing technics such as fly fishing and many of them are enthusiastic to tying a fly with only feathers and fur. The next generation of natural consious fly fishermen are in the starting blocks!

Holger Herold- Coburg (D)

Holger was born in 1976 in Lichtenfels, and has gone fishing with his father for the first time when he was 10 years old. As was customary where he grew up, his father fished with worms or corn. Only through magazines did he know something about flyfishing. At the age of 24, flyfishing crossed his path, and he was fascinated by it. He took a beginner’s course in Coburg, and the art of flyfishing has inspired him so much, that he sold all of his other equipment, and fishes only with the fly.

Since as a beginner, he also lost a lot of flies (that are not cheap), he also started tying his own flies. Since their was no fly tying course in his neighbourhood, he learned everything he knows from books and magazines – and of course, a lot of practice!

A friend then advised him to participate in a fly tying competition, and so for the last 6 years, he has competed in Slovenia and Norway.  There, he has learned to use different materials and techniques, and he has shown his expertise in demonstrations at several expositions, such as the fly happening in Putte (B).

Bas De Bruin- Hellevoetsluis (NL)

Bas was born in Rotterdam, March 1958. He gets an infection of the fly-fishing virus after a holiday in Sweden in 1995. His first attempt for fly-fishing was 2-years later in Norway. After he gets his first casting lesson on a park place, in the North of Norway, from a lorry driver he cached his first fish, a tiny Grayling. He went home and was totally hooked!

In a short time he learnt and practised a lot to improve on his casting-, flytying-, and fly fishing skills and became fly-casting champion of Holland. He did a lot to improve the casting skills off the Dutch VNV instructors and set in cooperation with the VNV the goals for the VNV casting certification programme.

He travelled a lot to chasing fish with his fly-rod and went from the Bahama’s (bonefish) to Ireland (Salmon) from Austria (colourful Grayling and Trout) to Norway (Polak, Salmon, Grayling and beautiful Trout) from Germany (Trout and Grayling) to Canada (from Chinook to Brook Trout). And every year he doesn’t forget to visit Denmark to catch one of his favourites fish the silvery Sea-trout.

At present he is an EFFA Master Instructor and a member of the EFFA Casting Advisory Board, Chairman of the recently founded Fly-fishing Club Voorne-Putten (VV-VP), chairman of the Dutch EFFA department, member the Dutch Association of Advanced Fly Tiers (D.A.A.FT) but they are not daft at all), Chairman of the fish management commission of the Oostvoornse Lake and a member of the Vision World Team.

Bas gives presentations about entomology, workshops on fly-casting techniques and tactics, gives fly-casting and fly-tying demo’s and lessons at clubs, fly fishing events (Fly Fair, Fly-happening, Visma, Fair for Lure and Fly, Nordic Hunting and Fishing Show etc.), game fairs and supplies information about fly-fishing courses  in Norway, Germany and Denmark (sea trout), at fly-fishing clubs in the Netherlands. 
He loves to demonstrate and teach fly-casting techniques at National and International Fairs. His biggest smile he gets when one of his students catch his first fish on the fly-rod and see the sparkling in his eyes that “He’s totally hooked” too!! 

Sepp Fuchs- Spijkenisse (NL)

Sepp started 35 years ago with flyfishing. He was very passionate to unlock the secrets of the rivers. One of his trademarks is practicing and using trickcasts to avoid obstacles and master the different currents in a river. And he’s more than willing to teach you his tricks.
Sepp is nowadays an international instructor and flytier. He gives flycasting demo’s and lessons at a lot fly fishing events such as Fly Fair, Danish Fly Festival, FFF Conclave and several other international and national shows and fly fishing events.
He’s member of the Dutch Association of Advanced Fly Tiers (D.A.A.F.T.), EFFA Master Fly Casting Instructor, board member of the Fly Casting Department EFFA, board member of the Dutch department of the EFFA and board member of his home Fly-fishing club “Vliegvisvereniging Voorne-Putten”.
Sepp is a very innovative instructor (inventor of the SF-roll cast –a method for  training rollcast on the lawn) former Dutch fly casting champion, he has his own fly casting video and is the inventor of the famous welded flyline loops with the use of shrinktubes.

Recently he joined the vision World team and became a member of the Fly Scene Pro Team.

Julien Lorquet - (B)

Julien has been fishing since childhood, and has discovered flyfishing at the age of 14. Since that first time, at the Lac de la Strange, the catch of that amazing brook trout at the end of the day was enough to catch the virus and make him forget the setbacks of the day. Since then, he spends his free time almost exclusively flyfishing.

He tries to fish as many different rivers as possible, but his favourite river is still the Vesder;  she has no reason to envy her foreign cousins, and her fish density and diversity of strikes makes her a perfect fishing school.

In 2003, Julien has also started entering fishing competitions, and not without results: he has become Belgian Junior Champion in 2004, and has been Belgian Champion on river twice in 2006 and 2008. This year, he will also compete in the Belgian Championship, as well as the World Championship in Italy.

Even if it is hard to realize in Belgium, his lifelong dream is to make fishing his profession, and to guide on the Belgian rivers, to let others discover our often underestimated fishing heritage.

Christian Bazan - (B)

At the age of 10, Christian started flyfishing on the shores of Belgian rivers and lakes. After a difficult start, some other fishermen have taken him along and have taught him what they knew. At 13 years old, he has started competing in Belgium, and has met Tony Perin, one of the leading men in Belgian flyfishing. His fishing methods have since then changed, he has fishing different placed and participated in international competitions.

Thanks to his teaching, he has learned numerous techniques that have helped him win competitions such as the Junior Belgian Championship, the French international competitions, etc.

In 2011, he has joined, together with Julien Lorquet, the Fly Scene Pro Team. Apart from that, they spend a lot of their  time fishing medium-sized rivers, such as the Ourthe, L’homme, and the Vesder. These trips allow them to train and try out new techniques.