Ari-Heikki Rintaniemi

my name is Ari-Heikki Rintaniemi and I live in Espoo Finland. I’ve born in 1984 and I study in the HUT (Helsinki University of Technology). I started flyfishing and flytying in the age of 11. In the beginning I didn’t have anyone to teach me how to cast or tie flies or how to fish with the fly. I started to read on the subject and tried to learn everything by myself. Step by step I figured out how to tie flies and even learned how to cast properly.

In 1999 I got interested in fly tying competitions. In that autumn, I particitipated for the first time in the Finnish flytying championship competition and I came in second in the youth-category. After that I’ve been in every Finnish championships (except in 2004 when I was in the army) and have had quite good results. I’ve been two times in the second place in the general-category (2001 & 2005) and in 2005 I won the salmonfly-category. In 2006 I was 3rd in the general-category and was one of the judges in the salmonfly-category.

I’ve also had some good results in different international fly tying competitions during the last years. Here are some examples:
2004:
-FQSA multi-composite 4th.(Twinkle Sky).
2005:
-FAOL Free style- category 1st. (The Attitude)
-Irish Open dry fly category 1st (Dark Fitzgerald) and creation shrimp fly category 3rd (A-H’s Orange Shrimp)
-Mustad classic salmon fly category 2nd (Thunder & Lightning).
2006:
-FQSA compulsory feather wing salmon fly 1st (Parson) and feather wing creation category 3rd (theme turbulence, fly Disturped Flow).
-Irish Open second in the overall competition. 1st in the creation salmon fly (Ancient Spirit of Mourne), 1st in the wet fly category (Blue & Mixed), 3rd in the creation streamer fly category (Jock Scott –streamer)
-in the FFF’s competition I took medal in nine category out of eleven. I won the spey/dee fly category (Lady Caroline), steelhead west coast streamer (Orange Heron), steelhead west coast surface (Green Butt Bomber) and trout soft hackle (PT Brassie).
-in the Fly Tyer of the Year competition arranged by flytyingforum.com I won spey/dee category (Release ‘em)
-in the Ken Sawada’s competition my Guardian of Silence and James Murray for the River Tay were judged to the Better Art Works and my Sherbrook was in the Excellent Art Works.

Nowadays I like to tie mostly classic salmonflies and fishing flies for trout, grayling and salmon. I don’t consider myself as an artistic oriented tyer. I enjoy more tying those old beauties and perhaps modifying them a bit. My goal is to learn to tie every salmon fly -type equally well. That’s something worth of reaching for!

Tight lines!
Ari-Heikki Rintaniemi

Flies By Ari-Heikki
Ancient Spirit of Mourne	Jock Scott with Spey Hackle	Spirit Fly No. 9	Dunkelt	Night Hawk