My name is Paul Van De Sande, born 7/12/1961 in Heist op den Berg (this is a small town in Flanders, Belgium), I am married almost 20 years with Nicole and we have a 18 year old daughter called Yasmien.
I learned fly tying in 1990 after meeting Jan Mertens on a show and he became my tutor. The year after we started to fly fish together and since then we are fly fishing most of the time together for all kinds of freshwater and saltwater species.
In 1993 I got the opportunity to represent Swan products a Danish wholesaler of fly tying materials, after 5 years doing this part time I started to work full time for them. Being two years full time I got the opportunity to buy their fly tying department and on May 23, 2000 we started VDS fly fishing Tackle and created the brand Fly Scene.
Now ten years later I still don’t regret this decision and I still am enjoying working a whole day with fly tying materials. The last years we are concentrating more and more on producing our own materials instead of being a pure wholesaler. This brings me a lot of fun because now I can use my old profession, being an electronic engineer, to build our own machines to make fly tying products. We also have the representation for Vision in Flyfishing products for Benelux, Germany and France.
As a fly fisher and thanks to my profession I have fished from Alaska, USA over the British island to almost every country in Western Europe. Every year in october I do some professional guiding in Austria on the famous grayling River, the big Drau. Every year during this two week trip I design new patterns to represent the aquatic life graylings are feeding on. I have been tying flies on different festivals over Europe in the last 15 years and for me this is a time for meeting old friends and sharing techniques and knowledge. I have included a few pictures of my fly designs, hope you like them and see you at the festival.
Paul Van De Sande
paul.flyscene@skynet.be
