Magical Summer Days in Lapland

The last couple of weeks, I’ve made several 2-3 days expeditions into undiscovered country up north. Some successful, and some not-so-successful.

On one of these trips I stumbled upon a real treasure: a series of beautiful, small lakes, all connected by a little stream. They turned out to be  filled with my favourite species – the arctic char. And big ones, too…

This area lies far from the nearest road in a pretty remote area, and there were no traces of humans to be found anywhere.

The fishing in these clearwater lakes for arctic char is usually very tricky, but since there was lots of caddis around, and even a decent hatch of the gigantic Phryganea Grandis caddis, we had a hell of a lot of fun. We hooked and landed several big arctic char, and kept a couple for dinner. These fish were super strong fighters, and one of the big ones did several high jumps in the air during the fight. Since these fish are some of the brightest coloured fish I’ve ever caught, it was an amazing sight (if only I had a camera rolling…)!

The flies that worked best was the magical Ismopuppa and the Streaking Caddis on a longshank #6 (!) hook.

Another expedition coming up tomorrow…

Back in town

We came home two days ago. It feels kind of strange to be in a city again after the latest adventure. Since it never gets dark up there, we hardly got any sleep at all. Instead we had this strange and fantastic flow of fishing, filming, eating and laughing.

Some weird things happened, more about that will be showed later in the blog. Did we get any fish? Yes, we did. Did we loose any fish? Yes we did. Joona will tell you more about that. Here are some pics from the trip. Soon we’ll put up both beautiful and ugly movies, just wait and see! /Fredrik

Håvard casting

Alone on the mountain

Take a closer look!

Nice trout

Håvard enjoys something

Magic light of northern Scandinavia

Magic light 2

On the meny

At the fire place

Why is Tap smiling?

Our producer made some casts...

Tapani was very happy.

Beautiful Norway

Extreme arctic fishing ahead!

Hi

I’m just finishing my packing for the expedition we are going to make with the JFF team. The destination is far up north, about as far as you can get in Europe. Tomorrow I will travel to Kiruna in northern Sweden where I’ll catch up with the other guys. Then we drive further up north to a secret destination that might be revealed later. What I can tell you is that no jazz band has ever fished there before.

We are expecting to encounter big trout and arctic char on this trip. We know for sure that where we are heading there’s fish up to 5 kilos, and trout between 2 and 3 kilos are not rare. But if they are easy to catch, that’s another thing. There’s also the riskt that the northern wind can spoil the trip. Heavy winds from the North Pole can make fly fishing difficult at times. In the northernmost parts of Scandinavia there are hadly any trees to stop the wind either.So this trip is like gambling, we put all in and might get home empty-handed, or we might hit the jackpot.

We will of course be filming the action and the films will be published on this site. Be patient – for some reason we like to spend more time fishing than editing movies right now. As soon as we get back we’ll start working on the video footage!

Fishing and Filming in Ransarån

Cheerio,

Here’s a quick photoblog from the Ransarån trip, which happened already two weeks ago. We made the trip with Håvard, Terje and myself aiming to catch some beautiful trout and of course, the arctic char.

Besides fishing, it was a very good opportunity to try out the capabilities of the new video gear that we had gotten. I attempted to shoot a short fishing movie with Håvard as the protagonist. It was a bit hard to make it look like he was the only one there, since he’s always talking… But I think I got a few good cinematic seconds here and there. Stay tuned, it will be posted here soon!

As a learning opportunity, the sight fishing there was excellent. We got one full night of incredible sight fishing. I didn’t catch anything, but had something like 15 opportunities on big cruising fish on around 1,5 to 2,5 kg range. Both trout and the arctic char. Håvard got the nice 1,45 kg arctic char in the end. Just looking at those beautiful fish is the best thing!

Here’s the photos from both the stills that we took, and the captures from the upcoming short film:

Restless in Ransarån

Tapani and I just came back from the legendary Ransarån. Terje Storsten, a great bass player/fly fisherman came with us on the trip. The objective of our little expedition was to hunt for the ultimate Nordic trophy fish – the big arctic char.

Ransarån offers excellent fishing for good-sized brown trout and arctic char, but what really sets it apart is the sight fishing conditions. To be able to see the fish in the water while you´re fishing for it makes things very exciting…

PS! Tapani filmed a lot with his Canon DSLR camera and hi-fi audio system on the trip, so you can expect some really cinematic stuff from Ransarån soon…

Finland here we come! Uusikadulla!!! Rajakala!!! Hevonk****!!!

The Tight Lines Quartet Is Dead – Long Live Jazz & Fly Fishing!

When we were in Gothenburg recording our new album, we had a vote and the result was unanimous: The band is no longer called Tight Lines Quartet, but simply Jazz & Fly Fishing.

Nobody was using the other name anyway – everyone just called us Jazz & Fly Fishing (we even did ourselves).

Jazz & Fly Fishing is just a way cooler name for the band, and I guess it´s also less confusing for people now that we have the same name for the band and the show.

We´re doing a lot of planning at the moment. Scheduling the rest of 2010 – the fishing, the playing and the filming is a lot of work, but we´re getting very close to a finished schedule now. We´ll post things here as soon as everything is in the pocket.

The real fishing season is so close now – there´s barely enough time to tie the last flies. Mowahahahahahahah!

Here´s one of my favourite summer memories:

Big is beautiful!

Things happening – mostly Jazz and Fly Fishing

As you may have noticed, we added a Gallery tab to the JFF site. It’s still a bit under construction but there are already over 250 pictures covering last summer’s experiences! We’re also making the site more communicative to visitors and networkers.

These improvements will be just a small step on a way to total Jazz and Fly Fishing world domination. In a couple of weeks we’ll be recording an album in one of Sweden’s finest studios and we already scheduled most of summer for some prime fishing trips; This summer we’re going to fish in some of the most exotic remote locations where no jazz band has ever fished before.

Reading Håvards last post about fishing wild arctic char at Ransarån got me really thinking about fishing, summer and good times. Here’s some feelings from finnish midsummer from two years back:

Spring fishing in Ransarån

Vegard Veberg from the Norwegian magazine Jakt & Fiske came with me to the spectacular lower Ransarån in late May 2009. He wrote an excellent article about our adventures , and it was published in the latest issue of Jakt & Fiske. You can se a preview on their website: http://jaktogfiske.net/id/1804.0

PS! Tapani and yours truly are going there in early June this year, and I´m really looking forward to that trip! The fishing there is pretty tricky and very exciting – sight-fishing in crystal clear water with big arctic char and trout cruising along the banks. Poor Joona and Fredrik are busy with other stuff, and cannot make it. I guess they´re kind of jealous…  Mohahahahhahahahahah! Mohahahahah! Mohahahahhahaha!

Ransarån is just one of the interesting waters in the Kultsjödalen area. Satsån, Vojmån, Kultsjöån, Saxån and the Stekkenjokk plateau are other places where it´s well worth spending a week or two.

You can check out Ransarån and the Kultsjödalen area here: www.kultsjogarden.se/index.php

Ransarån

Aaaaaarrrggghhhh!

As the merciless Scandinavian winter slowly moves towards spring, my urge to go fishing is getting stronger by the minute, and I´m scanning the fly fishing forums day and night, googling all over the place for some kind of satisfaction. All this does is of course to make the urge even stronger. I´m getting pretty desperate, and I really don´t know what to do about it.

The weather outside my window here in Oslo is very pretty, with clear blue skies and no wind. The only problem is that the temperature is around -10 C… The meteorologists say that the sea ice hasn´t been this thick and widespread since 1987, so there is no chance for any saltwater seatrout fishing either. You can almost walk between Norway and Denmark. Seriously!

Well – I guess all we can do is wait. While we wait, I have a couple of links for you (all in Norwegian, I´m afraid, but still worth checking out, if only for the pics and vids):

www.utras.net: A brand new Norwegian blog about fly fishing by two guys from Tromsø and Harstad. Mostly about trout and salmon fishing up north.

www.fluefiskesiden.no: This site has a very active forum. The fly tying and entomology stuff there is outstanding.

www.fluefiske.net: Excellent fly fishing site which is updated frequently with news and articles. The forum is also very good.

And then a couple of pics just to put some more napalm on the fire:

Arctic Char fishing in Mordor

The next day, the festival staff hooked us up with a local fishing oracle, Morten,  and together we embarked on a serious fishing trip for my favourite fish – the arctic char. Morten´s special place was like nothing I´ve ever seen. Just going there was an adventure in itself! The round was dangerously narrow (even by Norwegian standards) and razor-sharp cliffs were everywhere, looking like giant teeth that could take a bite of us any second.
The fishing was good, and we all caught some nice arctic char. Great success!

The next day, we started on the epic journey from Hamningberg (about far north as you can come in Europe) to Gotheburg.
Man, it’s a long drive.