Huge trout – incredible!

Here’s a sneak peek for one of the upcoming blogs. Håvard caught this huge trout on one of our recent trips. Stay tuned, we’ll tell all about it later!

Super size trout

Picture gallery from the north

Here are some pictures from one of the recent Jazz and Fly Fishing trips. Let’s start with the introduction:

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!

Full moon

The weather was excellent when me and Fredrik decided to go for sea trout fishing after a long break. Light wind from the west and good conditions in the water. A couple of hours of fishing in the evening, and Fredrik’s sinking line and a big shrimp imitation were what the trout liked. He landed two beautiful trout and all I got was a couple of takes and a big wave behing my muddler minnow. When the sun went down the big beautiful full moon rose up, and the lighted up the path to the car. I just love night fishing!

Cleaning your waders

Maybe the most peculiar piece of clothing that the fly fishermen wear are the waders. Maybe not the stuff James Bond would wear, but let’s face it. All fly fishermen love their waders, right? Waders or Armani suit? Waders. Most of the time.

After a hard day of fishing you might want a beer in a nearby pub, and wearing the waders you will definitely get some extra gazes from the ladys (or gents). But keep in mind that fishing is tough, and the waders will eventually get dirty and smell bad (I mean really bad).

So all of you who want to finish off your day by hanging in the pub wearing your favourite pants, this guide is a must for you!

Jazz & Fly Fishing…

What is jazz and what is fly fishing? Some of you who read and watch this blog might be fishing maniacs, musicians or maybe both. But I guess that many of you just discovered a site where four idiots are doing weird stuff and now you’re checking us out every now and then!? I will now try to (maybe you’re already into both J&F) make you try both jazz and fly fishing…

Jazz, is it strange? Do you have to know what you hear when you listen to it? Do you have to play an instrument and buy a hip jazz hat in order to listen to jazz? Of course not. I could write page after page but I’ll try to keep it short! Jazz CAN be strange and demanding to listen at, that’s for sure. But so can pop music. And rock music. And salsa. And so on… The thing is… jazz can also be very smooth and easy to listen to. If you never bought a jazz record in your whole life, there is one magic record that is perfect to start with. The cool thing is that this record never gets bad. It works every time you’ll put it in your CD. I’m talking about Miles Davis, one of the real heroes in the music world.

The name of the record is Kind Of Blue, buy it, it’s a keeper!

Now, what about the fly fishing world? Many people believe that you need to spend lots and lots of money and read thousands of books before you can start to fish. After that you must practice ten hours a day for three years before you will catch anything. This is wrong! People often say “it seems so difficult”. That is not true. It is not difficult! IT IS NOT DIFFICULT! Anyway, get a fly rod and you’ll be surprised! That’s all I’m saying. The only things you need is: 1 fly rod, 1 simple fly reel, 1 fly line, some flies and some regular fishing line. Good luck! /Fredrik

Guideline Fario

There’s been a lot of talking lately about Guideline’s new fly rod series Fario. It has been praised by the critiques (the 9′ #5 rod won a test in Trout & Salmon magazine) and our friends who have tested it have been very impressed. And when we got our hands on the 9′ #5 we just had to try it, even without water or fish.

Fredrik was on his way to a soundcheck and we only had time for some casts on the grass. Speaking of that, casting on grass really makes people talk: “Are you catching anything?”  “ Where’s the fish? Let me see the fish!” and so on. An old man came to us, shook his head and wondered what on earth we were up to and why. He had some tips for the really long casts, such as: “You have to put a heavy weight on the end of the line, then you’ll cast further”. We didn’t have anything to tie on the line so the man just shook his head, said some unrecognizable words and slowly went away, disappearing like a trout in the stream.

Well, the rod is not just beautiful to look at, it was a real delight to cast. We used a #5 Guideline Highwater line, and the action felt very good at all distances. You could easily load the rod even with a short line, but the rod didn’t have any problems to hold a long line in the air and then shoot the last meters. I know some people use to use heavier lines on their rods, say a #6 line on a #5 rod, to get a better feeling on short distance. I don’t think this is be necessary on this rod, even though it probably could handle a heavier line just fine. We never tried a #4 line but it would probably work well if you are used to lighter lines and faster action.

It was great fun to try the rod, and while the casts became longer and longer, the sense of time started to fade. Fredrik realized he was already late for the soundcheck and had to take the rod case and the drum stick case on his back, and ride the bike to the gig. I was left alone in the rain, without the rod, feeling empty. Well, I can’t wait to get fishing with that rod!

JFF lifestyle, part II

Here’s a glimpse of one of the fishing trips me and Fredrik did last week. It was the first week of the sea trout season and despite mostly cold and windy weather we had some nice moments of sunshine. I also got a chance to test my new JFF-camera: it’s a GoPro HD Hero videocamera that is waterproof and very tiny. Easy to carry on wherever you go. The week was not only blue skies and sunshine, and also the darker moments were captured on film. So there’s more to come…

Oh yes, I almost forgot! The music on this video clip is a sneak peek to the material we recorded a few weeks ago. The tune is called “Hatch”, and is one of my compositions for this band. It’s not mixed yet, and I mercilessly faded out from the beginning of Tapani’s wonderful bass solo. Sorry Tap!

The JFF High Life

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.

Ransarån

This area holds some beautiful fishing waters that all have more or less the same name: Ransan, Ransaran, Ransarån, Ransaren…  We took the boat at lower Ransarån  to get across the lake Ransan. Our target was to go to the river-mouth of the upper Ransarån and hike upstream to find a good camping spot.

Taking the easy way across the lake

It was a very nice hike by the reindeer trail. Looking at the pools and streams our anticipation for the fishing was quickly building. Fredrik took the time to pick up some mushrooms. We ate them.

Håvard doing the Bear Song

The border of Sweden and Norway is amazing when it comes to scenic views and good fishing. The upper Ransarån is a versatile river in a bigger water system. The wildlife here is still very abundant, and during the boat trip I heard some stories of encounters with the bear. Since the area is one of the most densely populated bear territories in northern scandinavia, the stories were not hard for me to believe. But we weren’t here for the bear. I had a feeling we could easily spend two weeks exploring these waters and finding the best holding spots for the trout.

Fredrik's trout

As the sun went down, we were ready. And when it comes to fishing, night is the time when things really start cooking.