Flexi-Stripper

[Morsie]

Any of the esteemed members of this board know who manufactures the Flexi-stripper line management unit? Good bits of kit.

[Geenomad]

Hi Peter
This seems to be the story.

https://ahrexhooks.com/2020/06/04/ahrex-flexi-stripper/

Cheers
Mark

[Morsie]

Thanks for that Mark, I have one of the originals, which I had rarely used and recently discovered what a super piece of kit it is. I didn't know Ahrex now had them. Got to use it in the surf recently and provided you strip properly, to suit the unit, its very good. Certainly not a conventional stripping basket.

[Viking Lars]

As Mark says above, that *is* the story - I know, because I wrote it :-). It is a great piece of gear, I use mine (and have done since they first came out) in many different situations and I'm quite happy with it.
One important thing to note is that if the pegs get bent (from travelling, for instance), put the FlexiStripper (without the belt!) into an oven at 90 degrees C for 5-10 minutes and watch the pegs straighten. The Ahrex-guys made a small upgrade, btw, by including a more comfortable neoprene belt than the original webbing belt.

Lars

[Paul Arden]

Can they also be boiled? Baking was never really my thing.

[Viking Lars]

Probably - I’ll give it a try :-).

[Geenomad]

Small bloody world. Peter, yeah they look handy and line management is an unglamorous subject close to my breaking point. Lars, forgive me but I only read the first few paragraphs and didn't get down to the author credits.

Here's the small world story. I'm locked down in Melbourne, time isn't short and my curiosity was aroused. I follow up on the line management device and get on the trails of a Danish rod builder and Ahrex. Suspecting these trails crossed I combine search terms in Duck Duck Go which gives me the quack to the piece written by Lars.

My curiosity was increased when I saw the first pictures because they revealed the origins of a homemade device attached to the leg of fellow fly fisher I met on a sand flat during the ebb tide when I was looking for dinner at least a decade ago. Flathead was the target, a particularly ugly demersal ambush feeder which happens to be a mug for the fly and particularly tasty. My fellow fly angler was a guy from South Australia who had repurposed a white plastic tub, probably an ex paint container but I was too polite to ask. We talked and swapped flies and I still have his whiting popper somewhere tied on a #8 Mustad 34007 - possible segue to Ahrex hooks. Pretty sure it was Evans Head in northern NSW, c.2009.

So, from Oz to DK and back to Oz, all courtesy of a bulletin board with a UK url owned by a guy who lives in Malaysia. Wish I had found a way to include the federal jokers in dressed in camo snatching people off the street into vans being driven around Portland Oregon but it didn't come to me so I left it out.

Cheers
Mark

[Morsie]

Lars Thanks for the tip on getting the "spikes" straight again, mine have certainly collapsed. As they are Scandinavian originally I figured someone here would know the history of them.

[Thomas]

Hello,

Lars, what are the pros and cons of the stripper compared to a regular basket? I use a Linekurv for my fishing after sea-run brown trout in the Gothenburg archipelago. I have modified my basket with longer "spikes" and a "clip" that locks the line between the basket and the reel. I don´t use shooting heads but I do sometimes have a lot of line in my basket (+30 meters).

Cheers Thomas

[Viking Lars]

Hey Thomas!
If you read the blog post I did on the Ahrex-blog, one thing I mention is length og line. There is no doubt that if you handle lots of shooting line/runningline, a "real basket" is better (here I personally prefer the Danish made Baskette). If you wade deep and there are waves, waves *can* also wash the line off the FlexiStripper and I think those are the two main differences.

Lars