I Love Autumn!

Last year, I made a video about autumn fly fishing called Eternal Summer. In the video´s voiceover I say something like  “I have to admit I´ve never really liked autumn that much”.

Well, now I have to admit that since moving up north, I´ve actually started to like autumn a lot! I went fishing yesterday, and again it was a day to remember. Sure, the hatches aren´t as intense as they can be in, say, early July. And the midnight sun isn´t here anymore, so no more magical nights of intensely red sunlight and rising fish.

But in return, the action is so compact, predictable and defined. The best time is from around 11.00 until maybe 18.00 or 19.00. All it takes is little/no wind and decent temperature for a little while, and voila: hatches and rising fish. And with the myriads of weird land insects crashing to the surface this time of year, the fish are quite opportunistic, too. So the fishing can actually be really good if you manage to hit the right conditions. In addition, the scenery is just so spectacular with the colours and the clear air and water.

And, in case you missed it, here´s the video:

Eternal Summer from Jazz & Fly Fishing on Vimeo.

Later –

H.

Leak

Hello again!

This weekend wasn´t supposed to be about fishing at all. Friday was spent doing lots of incredibly boring office work (the dark side of being a jazz musician), and saturday was all about manual labour. Well, the weather was awful anyway, so it´s not like I missed out on any fly fishing.

Today, the weather was simply perfect: very warm for the season and hardly any wind. Knowing that we have few days like that left before winter comes a-knocking, I decided to try to squeeze in at least a couple of casts. I had a window of maximum three hours, and went to a secret little gem of an arctic char lake to see if anything was hatching. And it was! Quite a few mayflies decided to pop through the surface, and the arctic char were rising for them. The coolest part was that you could see them so well in the water – the water is just so incredibly clear in these mountain lakes in the autumn. Watching those beautiful fish cruise around and sometimes rise all the way from three or four meters depth to the surface to suck down a newly hatched mayfly is truly a sight for gods. And just being out there on an autumn day like this is something else: The colours, the crisp, ultra clear air. Ahhh.

During my way-too-brief fishing session, I caught two good fish, lost a third, and – of course – saw a real monster that did not take my fly. It rose and rose, grew bigger and bigger, and turned 2 cms from my fly, leaving a big swirl in the surface. That´s the one I´ll remember.

Some more iPhone-pics:

PS! The weather looks good for the next couple of days, so there might be some more reports coming up. Hopefully I can capture some moving images too. I´ll let you know.

Later –

H.

It’s time for the highlight of the year, the JFF Nordic Expedition! As usual, we will be exploring unknown territories in secret places far north. We’ll be away from computers and blogs and stuff for a while, but stay tuned! Here are some goodies from the past years:

This week I was playing some gigs in old churches in Sweden. Nice, acoustics and beautiful buildings and surroundings. We played some folk tunes, classical themes and hymns, all arranged for a jazz trio. I of course brought my camera and took some photos along the way.

When I got home I went fishing for sea trout with Fredrik. We planned to stay all night – I would then drive him to the train station and off to holidays – but then a heavy rain and chilly, strong wind ruined our masterplan. We interrupted the all night fishing session and went for a beer instead. One trout was landed, a nice 1,3 piece of silver. Although the rain made filming difficult, we managed to get some material before and after. Stay tuned, new video coming shortly!