Meeting in Sweden

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It is time for our first film music-session. It will take place in Gothenburg tomorrow. Maybe there will be time to do some fishing also, lets see…  We really need to record more background music to our short movies. We’re going to play lots of stuff, probably a lot af very weird sounds and grooves. Anyone who has a certain request? Something you think will fit our strange movies? Now you have a great chance to affect our choice of music and so on. Feel free to wish! More about this tomorrow…

Prague ahead

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I’m soon off to Prague in Czech Republic, to have a few days of holiday with my family and relatives. A great opportunity to get away from this hectic everyday life of jazz and fly fishing. But look what I found: this weekend there is a big fly fishing competition/happening in the middle of Prague, called Fish Festival (no, I’m not attending!). Also, since Prague is a city filled with jazz clubs, concerts and jam sessions, I guess it will be difficult to totally avoid jazz too.

Since this is my first time in Prague, I’d appreciate all tips when it comes to jazz clubs, music shops, fishing tackle shops, restaurants, pubs…

From http://www.fishfestival.cz

Fish on at the Fish Festival 2009 (picture from www.fishfestival.cz/)

The battle in Arjeplog

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Power plant – Do you like that word? How many beautiful rivers and landscapes have been destroyed because of the human hunt for money. More money. More, more and more.

Or is it really about the money? Sometimes it feels like some people never get satisfied, they simply have to destroy something. In a world with global nature problems, it should be easy not to destroy anything more. It should be very easy.

This time the Swedish government, led by Mr. Fredrik Reinfeldt, is planning some scary stuff. They’re aiming to build a new power plant in a nice little village called Arjeplog in northern Sweden. In fact, Arjeplog already has one power plant. The strange thing is that many locals in the Arjeplog area also want to build the power plant. I suspect that everybody in this little fairytale don’t know about the consequences when building power plants… or maybe they just don’t care.

Reinfeldts government are lowing the taxation of the population. The rich part gets more rich and so on. With other words, Sweden is losing some money at the same time. Other people have to fill that gap. And so is apparently the nature – in this case Arjeplog, because of the new power plant. Or how was it – is this really about the money?

One small detail is that the water running through Arjeplog contains some of the biggest and most beautiful trout in Europe. That tribe is unique and Arjeplog has a very well working sport fishing industry. Every year thousands of people go there to get their dream fulfilled – to catch the big one. It is not unusual with fish around 7 – 8 kg. Now the trout tribe might be cut down in numbers with 30-50 %. I’m talking only about the trout, then we have all the other species, insects and animals.

view from Arjeplog

How it can look a couple of kilometers away

Power people

It is important to mention that many locals are also against the power building plans. Actually, people all over Sweden are angry about this idea. But most of us Swedes don´t know about it yet, and that´s why we must spread the word. Please do the same thing!

To be continued…

Salmon fishing in the Yemen

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Here’s a novel that might be of interest to all you fishermen out there (and everyone who likes an entertaining book). Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, by Paul Torday, is a comedy about a project to plant salmon in the desert wadis (rain season streams) of the Yemen. The project, run by a rich Yemeni sheikh, gets support from the British prime minister, and the poor fishery scientist Alfred Jones is drawn into a mess that grows beyond all limits. This is an entertaining satire about fishing, cultural differences and political games.

As they say on the book’s website: An extraordinary, beguiling tale of fly-fishing and political spinning, of unexpected heroism and late-blooming love and of an attent to prove the impossible, possible.

According to imdb a film of the book is coming up in 2012, directed by Lasse Hallström from Sweden. Ewan McGregor is to play the main character Fred Jones.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Road Trip to Eco Rapids part 2

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Blog from Eco-Rapids #5. (You can find all of the Eco-Rapids blogs here)

On this second episode of the Eco Rapids road trip: We woke to nearly perfect conditions and this time we were going for Syväjoki (Deep River), which was a small forest stream with both trout and grayling. Some reeeaaaallly nice fishing we had there! And afterwards it was back to Kynäkosket area where we fished with a finnish fly fishing legend, Jouko Keto.

Äänikkö

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Äänikkö, which is an old finish tape recording machine with a nice and warm sound, is also a Copenhagen based band, which plays old Finnish songs with new more or less freeform arrangements. They were playing at Børnetheater in Christiania. I liked it. Check it out.

Learning Fly Casting

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Can you learn fly casting in just 2 hours? Apparently you can.

One of our missions at J&FF is to teach every jazz musician how to fly fish. In just two hours in separate occations, my friend Joel (who is also a great jazz bass player!) learned the basics. And as you can see in the video below, he’s not only doing a decent back casting, but also the double haul & the reverse cast!

Nice! This is a clear message to anyone who thinks learning fly casting is difficult.

The Student

The Student

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The Teacher

The Teacher

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The Fly Caster:


The Bass Player:

Heavy Planning

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Lots of exciting stuff happening at the moment!

Soon, we´ll meet up in Gothenburg for another recording session. The plan is to record soundtracks for our films + maybe some additional tracks for our coming album.

Oh yeah, the album. Preliminary release date is mid-March 2011, roughly. We´ll get back to you on that. The album release will be followed by a release tour in the Nordic countries, with screening of some Jazz & Fly Fishing highlights before the concerts.

Fishingwise, the season´s end is drawing closer, but we´re trying to squeeze in a trip to Bornholm for seatrout before the curtain drops. I´ve seen some pics from the late autumn fishing there, and the November light looks fantastic – as does the big seatrout, which supposedly can be found close to the shore at that time.

We´re currently considering several exciting destinations for next year. Tours with concerts and fishing in Bosnia, Russia, Iceland and Down Under are on the drawing board for next year – it´s really just about finding the time to do all the stuff we want to do.

We also have some serious plans to go for the ultimate Nordic freshwater challenge – sight fishing for the 3 kg+ arctic char. It´s not gonna be easy, and we might end up spending a week in the mountains catching absolutely nothing (been there, done that). These places hold a few very big fish, and you don´t get many chances in a week´s fishing. And the weather will of course mess you up all the time. But if it had been easy, it wouldn´t be as much fun. At least that´s what I try to tell my self every time I fail miserably. Some serious salt water fishing and pike fishing is also on our agenda. And lots of other stuff, too.

Catch ya later –

Håvard

Hungry?

This is the biggest hamburger we´ve seen on our tours.
It´s from Bogen in Northern Norway. Has anyone seen a bigger burger?
Send pics of huge burgers to us!