The big trout perspective

The picture of the monster trout on the previous blog made some people suspicious. Was the picture somehow manipulated? Or was the fish really that big? The answer to both questions is yes. The picture has been digitally manipulated, but the size of the fish is real.

We’ve had countless discussions about how a picture of a catch should be taken. A big and fat fish appears big, fat and beautiful in a good photo, but you can also ruin the shot pretty easily.

One of the biggest and prettiest trout I ever caught was captured on camera. Too bad my pose was terrible as I’m blocking the view to the fish with my arm. The trout is also partially under water which makes it even more difficult to admire the fat and firm belly of the fish:

Joona blocking the trout

Here are some hint for better pictures:

• take a tight shot with the fisherman and the fish

• if you´re going to release the fish, keep it in the net under the water and lift it up quickly for the shot before release

• don’t block the view of the fish with your body, arms or fingers

• keep the fish clean, and rinse it with water

• use a wide angle lens and hold the fish slightly in front of you: a wide angle lens makes objects closer to the camera appear bigger (but that goes with your fingers too!)

• look through the camera viewfinder/screen and try different angles to find the one that looks best

One of the lakes we were fishing was overpopulated by small trout. We caught some trout for dinner, and took a couple of photos of a 25 cm trout with a regular compact camera with a wide angle lens. The picture doesn’t lie, or does it?

Trout in front of Håvard

Håvard in front of the trout

Finally, some photos from different points of view:

The photoshopping of the trout? The picture was cropped, the line was ”removed” from the picture and Håvard’s finger tips were cut in from another photo. But the fish is in natural size. It’s all about perspective.

This was the trick

The original

Petzi’s Revenge Part 2

Sometimes, success can go to your head. Petzi, our producer took another shot at a big trout after landing a very beautiful 1,3 kg dry fly trout. This time he wasn’t as succesful.

The Tables Have Turned

4th of July 2010: After spending the better part of last summer chasing us four bandmembers around with a camera, it seemed only fair that our producer, Petzi, should make the first cast on this beautiful wilderness river up north. After all, Petzi is a passionate fly fisherman, and it must have been very difficult to go to all these fantastic fishing spots all over Scandinavia without being able to make a single cast.

Despite having an insane amount of well-meant advice and comments thrown at him by four fish-crazy musicians, Petzi somehow managed to keep cool and catch the beautiful trout that was rising on the neck (the fish later became a tasty dinner in the able hands of Fredrik, our master chef). Kudos.

As for myself, I have to admit that this is some of the worst backseat driving I´ve ever heard. I really didn´t know that I sounded this annoying. I´m going to put some duct tape over my mouth and leave it there. Seriously.

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:

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!

Picture gallery from the tour

Blog from Eco-Rapids #2

Here are some more photos from the Finnish tour. There were taken at Eco-Rapids by our guide Antti Härkönen, who is of course a fly fisherman, but also very much into music. He sings in a heavy metal band but after meeting us he’s totally into jazz and is considering going into modal jazz growl-scatting.

Thanks for the beautiful pics and good guiding Antti!

Tour feelings

Blog from Eco-Rapids #1

Greetings from the JFF mini tour in Finland! We started off with a gig in Helsinki, it was nice to be together again! We also saw some of the TV documentary for the first time and I can tell you it was special. Soon a year has gone since the TV-tour last summer and seeing all the places and happenings brought back the memories.

The gig was a lot of fun, we wrapped up and headed straight north towards Eco-Rapids in northeastern Finland. We have spent the last few days there fishing in a rapid called Kynäkoski and a smaller river Syväjoki, check out the pictures!

Tonight we have some very special fishing in Jyväskylä in Central Finland, and in the evening it’s time for the documentary and the gig again. We’ll be posting some videos and stuff soon, so stay tuned!

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****!!!

Spring in the Upper Itchen

May 30th: Finally back at the Upper Itchen!
As you can see from the video, the ice and snow has just melted, and the colours of the landscape are still very dull. The ground around the river is still frozen, so the water isn´t too warm…
But sure enough, once the wind dies down, the feathermidges start hatching and the trout starts rising. I caught several good fish on this first real dry fly day of the season.

Two days later, I was joined by my cousin Dagfinn, and Erlend Welde from the excellent Norwegian blog www.utras.net. The weather was even colder than the first day, and the action was much slower. We still managed to force a decent number of fish to take our buzzers and hatching midges, but the average size of the fish was a little bit smaller than the first day.
Great fun!

Some pictures:

Next stop: Ransarån!