Fredrik, JFF´s own sea trout master, has been to one of his secret seatrout spots around Gothenburg again. He sent us this picture just to make us jealous. Guess what? It´s working, Fred!
And what a beautiful fish! Since he is an accomplished chef, I´m sure he´s already made a tasty meal out of it.
How did you catch it, Fred? What´s your secret? Tell us! Tell us now! Must now! Must…. aarrgghhh…
Fat Freddie
Me and Joona went to a well known area outside Gothenburg. As we drove to the fishing spot we listened to our new “not-yet-made-CD” in the car. It sounds really hip! Joona also filmed some weird stuff in the car with his brand new super secret camera. He is filming everything (all the time) and since his camera is very small, you cannot see it. I must destroy the content of that camera, otherwise thera will be problems. Hmmm…
Anyway, it was a beautiful day, the first warm spring day this year. We were aiming for the sea trout. We found the sea trout. We caught the sea trout. A NICE sea trout! My biggest so far actually. You see, here along the west coast of Sweden, the trouts in the sea doesn’t get very big. The average size is around, let’s say 37 cm. If you catch one around 50 cm, it is a quite good day. This trout that bit over my fly today had the length of 61 cm! The rod was bent to an o, I was screaming and Joona was (of course) filming. What a day. Later Joona caught a couple of nice trouts.
In the evening I made a nice and easy done fish soup. I have to say that sea trout is one of the best fishes on the dinner table. Some white wine, homemade bread, the soup, jazz music and a bunch of good friends made that evening really nice. It is the JFF-lifestyle.
Lot’s of things are happening right now. The spring is coming, we are allowed to fish for the sea trout, the snow is gone, flowers starts to pop up in the nature and… most important of all: I am free to fish 24 hours a day in one week. So are J-man. The water is still very cold, around one degree (Celsius), something that transforms our legs to ice after a couple of hours out there in the water.
The first fishing day paid of – Joona caught a nice one around one kilo and I managed to catch a slightly bigger one (yes). Since it was the first trout of the year, it of course followed me home to join for dinner. Later this week we will show a nice and easy way to make them very tasty!
There are fly fishers out there who always release the fish, no matter what. Well, I’m not one of those cats (but I release most of the fish I catch), I like to cook and eat fish and feels great to skip the ugly fish in the freeze-box and eat fresh fish instead – fish that not belong to the big ugly fish-industri (grow fast, feed them with pellets, give them more pellets, make them bigger, make them to monsters, sell it to the people who can’t see how we are doing this)
Actually, I realize that I have to go now, Joona is picking me up in five minutes.
GONE FISHING
One of the main reasons why fly fishing is such a fascinating and time-consuming activity (some would claim it´s a life style), is that it´s not just about catching fish. Actually, there are several distinct spin-off hobbies within fly fishing:
Some people get really into entomology. They study the creatures that fish feed on, and spend more time searching the water bed for bugs than they actually do fishing. This sub-hobby often makes them experts in Latin as well.
Fly tying is a winter activity for most flyfishers, but tying flies becomes a sport in itself for some. Many compete in tying the neatest and most original flies. Despite the fact that the millions of existing fly patterns work just fine, new patterns and variations are invented every day.
Others get into photography, and end up dragging truck-loads of cameras and lenses around, hunting for that one magical shot.
Allthough many release a lot of their catch, the art of outdoor cooking is as important as the fishing for many, especially for those who like to camp out in the wild.
And the gear… Fly fishing gear is an endless source of debate among flyfishers. Some take it to the next level and become collectors, filling their houses with gear they´re never gonna use. They spend night and day on ebay, searching for the next “bargain”.
Hiking, canoeing, the study of geography, meteorology and even geology are examples of other popular spin-off hobbies.
But the fly cast itself is perhaps the most popular spin-off activity. The fly cast is a strange thing – it really is a quite impractical way of introducing a bait to a fish. The spinning rod is arguably a much more rational tool.
The fly cast has a lot in common with the golf swing – it isn´t difficult to make it happen, but you never fully master it. Lots of people spend more time casting than fishing, and some fly casters barely fish at all – they spend all their time on lawns, fields or casting ponds, trying to achieve the perfect zen-cast – the one that never stops flying and disappears into the horizon. And competitions in fly casting are held in all corners of the world.
Well, here are some very nerdy yet fascinating videos for you. The first one is recorded with a high-speed camera, and the caster is the Norwegian legend Sven Kalmar (courtesy of SuperRattus´ youtube channel – lots more there):
This one is by the Norway-based Swede Mikael Blomberg, who is one of Scandinavia´s best fly casters. It´s from one of his daily practice sessions on the snow. Enjoy :
From Mikael Blomberg on Vimeo.
And finally, some really strange and wonderful stuff – again by Sven Kalmar. This is getting pretty arty:
Aaaaahh, finally it’s christmas again. Do I like it? Do you like it? Well, both yes and no I guess. I feel that this religious day gets a little bit more hectic every year. This year, the very christmas eve 2009, I decided to skip the family, girlfriend and so on – instead me and David (a perch freak) planned to go 1000 kilometers north with lots of lemonade (!) and food. It sounded like a brilliant idea a couple of months ago. Nothing could go wrong! Yesterday my friend told me that he couldn’t make it anymore. There were some different reasons. Now we are going to my mothers house (she is not at home), 20 kilometers outside the town. Exiting? Very. While the family, my girlfriend and all the other people I know are having a great time, two idiots will go to a lonely house close to Gothenburg. Exiting? Very. Of course, it could have been worse, we are still alive and so on. One big issue though – the ice is here. We can’t fish. Not with our dear fly rods anyway. Maybe the next blog will have the name “ice fishing”. Lets see about that! But we can and will listen to nice music! No christmas tunes allowed, only music!
Last week we had some cosy evenings doing the traditional christmas stuff. For example me, Ingrid (Idas friend) and Ida made a very sweet gingerbread house. Perhaps we overdid it a bit…
By the way, our rehearsal weekend was super nice. The obvious highlight was our late meeting when we decided how to work with the band next year. Håvard was on fire and Joonas bottle with spiced wine was empty. Nice things will happen 2010! Will tell you more about that and our weekend in Gothenburg in a couple of days. But now, to all of you from all of us (?) – I/ we wish you a merry christmas and a chilly time. Håvard, Joona and Tapani do the same. I Can here their voices in my head, slowly whispering (in a unison scary choir) : MERRY CHRISTMAS M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S M E R R Y C R I S T M…
It’s been a long time since I posted to the JFF blog and the reason for that is that I needed to finish my school that is the Helsinki University of Technology. The process of making the thesis took me one whole year, and after finally returning the small black book I was a bit burn out. I even began to look a little bit like a mad scientist as you can see from the before/after pic. Fredrik finally pushed me to write something of what has been going on for past months after the unforgettable JFF tour.
The Thesis was about Ballistocardiographic measurement chair which is a device that measures hearts function by measuring reaction forces caused by the pumping of the heart according to Newton’s 3rd law. To say the same in more understandable way, I will cite my little sister who asked me few months ago: “Are you still working on the thing that measures your heart rate from your ass?” As the device measures the heart’s pumping force with sensors under a chair while subject is sitting on it, I have to say that it is kind of an accurate descritption of the device.
I was in Barcelona for a one week holiday and it really hit the spot! It was over 25°C many of the days and the seafood dishes really got me inspired. One of the days we went to beautiful Cadaqués, where we saw a lot of big fish just from the docks as you can see in the pic. And of course didn’t have any equipement to fish with. Some of the fish was estimated over 3kg’s and chasing the smaller 1 kg fish away! Needless to say I soon felt the urge to make a few casts even with spinning rod. We went to buy one from a local fihing store, but being in Spain, the store was of course having a siesta, so we had to helplessly wach those big fish in crystal clear water. When we finally got one it was already stormy weather, but me and Johanna did a few casts anyways, without luck…
Now that I’m free from any institutions for once in 21 years, I’ve been really enjoying stuff, such as preparing fish meals such as marinara soup, fried flatfish with lime-butter and prawns with garlic. I also moved to Copenhagen from Helsinki. Danish language seems at the moment impossible and im still trying to pronounce the name of the street where we live right. I was out socializing last nite with the jazz musicians from Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium and I was introduced to the danish tradition of snaps drinking. So I’m a bit tired, but I feel that tomorrow will be freedom jazz dance all over again.
We are soon having a rehearsal/planning weekend in Gothenburg. The studio session for the album recording has been booked for spring 2010 and now we will be working on some new tunes. I’ve just finished a new tune in 12/8, called Kiruna Grand Central (a strange incident happened to me once at the Kiruna Station in Northern Sweden. Fredrik will possibly write about it later on the blog.). Anyway, it will be nice to hear our drummer Fredrik getting crazy on that tune. The problem is that he only can count to nine, which might cause some strange grooves…
The band has not met since the tour last summer, and we will celebrate the Tight Lines Quartet reunion with my home-brewed “glög”, a Christmas drink that is served warm with ginger bread. This year I made it extra strong to please our Norwegian friend Håvard.
I have been painting a little bit; it was a while ago now! In the beginning it went really bad, and a destroyed paper after paper in furious anger. After a while, I started to get the hang of it. Will continue and see what will come. I uploaded some of the latest paintings. I think that daily practice will pay of!
Today it is Sunday and I’m having two friends for dinner. One of them is Prince, the bass player from South Africa. He was supposed to fly home yesterday but he didn’t find his passport (!). The other one is Leon, an old friend to me who is very hard to please when it comes to cooking. But this time it is cool, I have already planned what to cook! We are going to start up with a very nice swede soup, not Swedish but basically made of the rout fruit swede. After that is says calf schnitzel, roasted root fruits with fresh herbs and a sauce made of mushrooms from the forest and red wine. And the dessert… well, have not planned that yet, lets see! As I am a friendly man/boy/santa/trout/drummer, I am now going to share the nice recipe on the soup! Ingredients:
A generous piece of butter
Some olive oil
One big onion
One swede (about 500 – 600 gr.)
Some garlic
Cream, 3 dl (real crème, not the fake ones!)
White wine, 2 dl
About 6 dl water
Black pepper
Broth after the amount of juice
A small piece of fresh chili
The soup is very easy to make! Do like this:
I have had a touch of fever now for two days. I find it extremely boring! After one day of sporadic practicing on the practice-pad and the piano I had to do something else. Started to bake and cook as a true maniac. My furious hands took over and I became the kitchen monster. No one can stop the kitchen monster from doing it’s work. It has to cook. When the food (Italian meatballs with lots of garlic, parmesan cheese and lot’s of other stuff plus pasta and bread) was done, the kitchen monster ate almost everything. Slowly I began to feel like a human again except from the the fact that I couldn’t hardly walk. Still, I decided to take a slow walk with my camera to catch the autumn before it’s gone. It looked like this. By the way… Soon, when the fever is gone, There will be some fishing for sea trout! /F
The tent woke us up automatically after the temperature in the morning sunshine reached 55C. It was good to take a morning swim in the river although the water was way too cold. Finally, we had the time to do some serious fishing without too much hurry. Did we catch anything? Yes we did.
On the last days eve in the tundra we had a concert and a fish feast at the base camp. We weren’t expecting any audience, but something nice happened, you’ll hear about it later.
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