Wim Alphenaar



Wim Alphenaar was born in The Hague, the Netherlands. In 1964 he started to tie artificial flies. The necessary knowledge he mainly got from foreign literature. After tying for which he made the course materials himself.

In November 1979 Elsevier published his first book 200 Vliegbindtips. He made the instruction drawings and illustrations in this pocketbook. Wim has been drawing one of his favorite hobbies since he has been a child. He took several courses at the Academy of Art in The Hague. He illustrated 24 books on angling. The specialist knowledge on microphotography however, he learned by self-directed learning and practice.

Wim has been wrote four years the columns The Fly of the Month and Artificial Bait of the Month for the Dutch magazine Sportvissers Journal. Furthermore his articles were published in several Dutch and foreign magazines. A few times his illustrations were published in the American magazine Fly Fisherman. In the twenty years he has been writing for several fly fishing magazines he wrote over 950 articles on fly fishing and fishing in common. Most are on tying flies, but also wrote articles concerning other subjects.

During four years Wim studied insects that are interesting to the fly fisherman and the fly-tyer. He has been studying for insects in Scandinavia and other European countries. In the Netherlands, Germany and Austria he did a lot of research. The information from this research is the basis of the flies he invents and publishes.

He wrote the books:
and the basic book in the Dutch language Fly fishing in practice

Fly tying techniques of Wim and several flies he creates are mentioned in the book Micropatterns of Darrel Martin, published Swan-Hill Press.

Several of his fly patterns are being tied in license by Spirit River for the US market.

In the 30-plus years Wim has been fishing with flies, he not only loves game fishing for salmonides and other fish with nymphs. He also likes to fish for pike with a streamer.
Wim maintains a web site which can be found here.

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