Blood Knot Blogger issue

One of our favorite online fishing magazines, Blood Knot Magazine, has released their 2nd annual Blogger Issue. This mag is packed with feature articles and fantastic photos from around the world. Excellent winter reading! We are also proud to be contributing writers on this one. Enjoy!

 

 

 

New Video: It´s Your Fault

A short edit from our tour in Poland, September 2011
Music: Jazz & Fly Fishing

Thanks: Ranjit Prasad at Saraswati Studios, Igor Glinda at Tartak Fly Fishing Centre, Kuba Standera at Sztuka Lowienia, Peter, Thomas, and all the other beautiful people that helped us out and made our stay in Poland so memorable.

We´re coming back, guys!
Special thanks to Roli Mosimann for supplying the title of the video and for sharing his philosphy of life with us.

Fly Fishing Russia´s Far East

Russia´s far east has always fascinated me. The vastness and remoteness of this enormous area makes Scandinavia´s deepest wilderness seem like an urban park.

And there is fish there, too: lots of weird and beautiful salmonid species, many of them unique to the area, as well as other interesting species. And there is very little real intel to be found online.

I stumbled upon this exciting website called Fly Fishing Russia the other day, and I thought I´d share it with you. The blog is run by fish biologist/flyfisherman Mikhail Skopets, and deals with, well, fly fishing in Russia. Highly recommended – check it out!

The above image shows Mikhail Skopets with what he refers to as a “good sized” Siberian Taimen – a fat 137 cm specimen. This kinda makes me wonder what he would consider a “big” taimen…

Fish soup

Fish soup!

If you fish in areas that holds a lot of wild fish it doesn´t harm to every now and then keep one fellow. When that happens, this recipe can be a good choice! If you have a lot of energy you can bake twisted baguettes at the same time. If you have even more energy, you can (the day before) make you own aioli and serve with the soup. If you still have energy left, give Håvard a call!

I actually haven’t had the time to take any good pics when making the soup since I´m then in the middle of soup-making-action. Lets take it from the top. This is what you need:

Fish soup is a quite easy dish to cook. It doesn´t take to long time, it is not very expensive and it is very tasty. There is basically only one thing you must avoid in order to make it taste good. Most of you out there probably already know what I’m talking about. This is what I’m talking about… ok, here it comes; whatever you do, do not boil the fish. Some chefs claim that fish is not supposed to get warmer than 58 degrees…

There are thousands of recipes of different kinds of fish soups, this is just my version. You can of course add or remove ingredients and create your own favorite.

Recipe, 4 – 6 persons (Before you do anything else, turn on a nice record and prepare and chop the ingredients)

Step 1

Butter, about 20 gram

Olive oil, some oil

Heat up the fat in a large pan, lets say medium heat

Step 2

Red onion, a half

Onion, a half

About 100g Leek,

Two Celery Sticks, one chopped finely chopped and added early, the other one in bigger chunks and added at step 4

Chili, not too much

Garlic, 1 – 3 cloves

One Potato, chop it as you feel

Add the stuff above and let it sweat for a while, not get brownish… this takes about 5 – 10 minutes.

Step 3

Tomato, one

Tomato puree, two spoons

Let the tomatoes run around for about 5 minutes before you add the broth

Step 4

Broth (+ water), 15 dl If possible, make your own

White wine, 2 – 3 dl depending on what kind of whine, taste and see!

One Carrot, Chop it as you feel

One Fennel, roughly chopped

Shell from lemon, more than you think but not the whole fruit, taste and decide

White pepper, some

Thyme, some dried and if you have; some fresh thyme as garnish

Celery, the big rest of it

Bay leaf, two – four

Curry, very little curry, less than you think, the soup is not supposed to taste curry

Let this boil on medium/low heat for about 15 – 20 minutes. Meanwhile – taste and add salt if you need. Since the fish holds no salt, the soup can be a little tiny bit too salt before you add the fish.

Step 5

Mushrooms (champignon), If they are small, don’t cut them. If big – big chunks! Wait a couple of minutes…

Step 6

Fish, about 400 – 800 gram bone free filet, cut in quite big chunks. Perch, char, pike, salmon… or just cod, what you can get that’s not caught on the other side of the world

Lower the heat and add the fish, make sure it doesn’t boil!

Step 7

Add (if you have) fresh thyme ring the food bell! /F

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Video

This spectacular video was brought to my attention by the great Swedish photographer and flyfisherman Knotan.
Be sure check out Knotan´s site, and enjoy the video!

The art of eating & fly fishing

As a longtime friend of Fredrik – the creative genius, drummer and flyfisherman of J&FF – I know that the subject of food is of utter importance. Whereas most people have probably been through the following stages, I will use Fredrik as an example, partly because he’s a nice guy that loves eating, and also because I have some photos for illustration.

1. Bring it to the max!

Before a long hike you should eat well to keep the body going for hours with a heavy back pack and a demanding terrain. Family pizza for instance. There’s no need to save on weight, fat or carbohydrates (but Fredrik is always whining about the price of the Norwegian food).

 

2. In-field cooking

Now this is a form of art. On a long trip the meals have to be planned so that there’s: a) enough food, b) not too much food to carry and c) tasty and varied food that is possible to prepare with very simple equipment (this is the most difficult one). Fredrik is a true master of making in-field gourmet dinners. We’ve had some of our lives’ best three-course meals in a tent in the middle of the Scandinavian tundra, prepared by Freddy the master chef. However, planning the amount of food can go wrong. Too much food and you end up competing who can make the longes “squeeze” out of a tube of soft cheese by jumping on it. Too little food and you realize it’s two slices of bread a day for the rest of the trip. Believe me, both have happened us.

 

 

3. Emergency situations

These photos illustrate some of Fredrik’s methods for surviving the extreme situations that may occur when you fish too much and eat too little. The recipes are in the photo titles.

 

 

Time for lunch now, stay tuned!