First published in Volume 15, Issue 4 of The Flyfish Journal
Jazz & What?
Jazz & Fly Fishing—part jazz quartet, part quirky film project, and a dream come true—traces its beginnings to a pub in Helsinki, in 2008, when two young men came up with the ingenious idea of putting together a jazz band of flyfishermen and making a TV documentary about the project. Those two men were Joona Toivanen, an award-winning Finnish piano player who is also a passionate flyfisherman, and Petri Luukkainen, a professional documentarian from Finland with a profound interest in jazz music and flyfishing. After hatching the idea, all they needed was a band.
The actual process of putting the band together turned out to be similar to that of creating a boy band, with slightly different criteria. The band members would have to be: 1. established professional jazz musicians; 2. deeply passionate flyfishers; and 3. decent human beings. Joona’s younger brother, Tapani (a bass player), and a Swedish drummer named Fredrik Hamrå fit the bill. To complete the quartet, they needed someone playing a lead instrument, preferably someone from Norway, since Norway has a vibrant jazz scene and lots of fantastic fishing. That’s where my guitar and I came in.
We’d been talking about doing a U.S. tour for years, but the idea had always felt slightly overwhelming, partly because of the massive logistics and financing needed. A U.S. tour would also mean spending time away from our families in the middle of the best jazz festival and dry fly fishing season in Scandinavia.
But, to be honest, a big part of our hesitation came down to a sneaking lack of self-confidence. Did we actually have an audience in the United States, or were we going to be playing empty halls? What’s more, the rivers of the western United States were said to be extremely technical. Did we have the skills necessary to trick those educated Henry’s Fork and Missouri river trout, or were we going to make complete fools of ourselves?
During a podcast appearance with author and angler Tom Rosenbauer in 2021, I mentioned that I’ve always dreamt of doing a tour in America, playing concerts and flyfishing across the country. People started reaching out, and we realized we had to seize the opportunity.
above Left to right: Tapani Toivanen, Håvard Stubø, Fredrik Hamrå and Joona Toivanen stroll a dirt road near the upper Ruby River, MT. It turned out the river was in flood and very muddy, so the rods stayed in their cases. Still a successful stop—for once, we got a decent band photo.
Origami
After that podcast, the tour, naturally, started in Vermont—but not for me. I missed the first gig in Manchester due to a visa issue, and while my bandmates chased rising trout with Rosenbauer, I endured a grueling 35-hour journey from Narvik, Norway, to Washington, D.C., battling layovers and stormy chaos at New York’s JFK airport along the way.
At the security checkpoint in JFK, frustrations ran high as cancellations piled up. I found myself in a brawl with a man harassing a woman about line-cutting. After I said, “Take it easy, man,” he snapped. I managed to evade his right hook, but chaos erupted. A massive security officer tackled the guy, folding him like origami. He probably survived, but I bet he missed his flight. All I know is I didn’t get to fish the Battenkill with Rosenbauer, and I missed out on a great session with Trout Unlimited’s Jesse Vadala and Todd Spire in the Catskills too.
above Joona Toivanen lets loose a silly cast in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. Thirteen years ago, Jazz & Fly Fishing published a video called “Advanced Trick Casting: The Shadow Cast,” meant as a parody of overly technical fly casting. It stirred a hefty debate online, since a lot of people thought we were being serious. Some even managed to find it disrespectful. Whenever the fishing is really slow, we tend to start shadow casting.
Good Habitat
After managing to get onto a flight, Washington, D.C. was a surprise. As the power center of the United States and the western world, I had envisioned a massive, noisy machine of a city. Instead, I found it to be intimate and relaxed, full of smiling, friendly people from all corners of the world, with music everywhere, a bit like Copenhagen—good habitat for Jazz & Fly Fishing, in other words. We filmed a couple of shadow casts in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, with the Washington Monument in the background, prepared for the possibility that security personnel might not appreciate the humor of making silly casts with a fly rod there. But again, just smiling, friendly people everywhere. D.C.’s fishing might not be quite on par with Finnmark, but the Potomac River was 10 yards from the House of Sweden, where we played a sold-out concert on the roof with the Watergate Hotel as backdrop. We hadn’t stared into the river long before we spotted the first fish, a carp weighing 9 or 10 pounds.
above Our rooftop concert at the House of Sweden in Washington, D.C. made us feel like the Beatles for a short while.
No Such Thing as Trespassing
After a Pittsburgh concert that was probably the best we’ve ever played, and a long flight to Salt Lake City, we were there—the Rocky Mountains, the American West. We picked up our rental, a Chevy Suburban that would be comically large in Norway, and drove all the way to Jackson, WY, in one stretch, collapsing in a budget motel.
A few hours later, we met Will Broeder and Alex Starinsky. Will is the owner of Snake River Angler, where we would play a small unplugged show later in the day, as well as a former drummer and all-around nice guy. They explained that due to runoff, only about five out of 50 rivers in the area were fishable. Fortunately, their favorite, the Green River, had just cleared enough for the hatches to begin. There was even a chance of encountering the enormous and almost mythical salmonflies. We drove far into the mountains on a rough gravel road through a gorgeous landscape. Vast and desolate, yet somehow welcoming, it reminded me of the Finnmark Plateau in northern Norway.
My very first cast in the United States was among the more memorable casts I have ever made. A well-shaped brown trout of about three pounds took a gigantic salmonfly imitation aggressively a fraction of a second after it landed on the water. Will yelled triumphantly. With a 20-inch trout on the first cast, the trip was already a success.
We hardly ever flyfish from boats in Scandinavia. On a big lake you might do it, but fishing from a boat in, say, a medium-sized Finnmark river would not be good etiquette. In our dry fly circles, it would be considered cheating. Part of the reason is the strong English heritage in Scandinavian flyfishing—the ideal of sportsmanship and the belief that the fish should have a fair chance. If the fish is out of reach, it’s out of reach. But the freedom to roam is also part of it. There is no such thing as trespassing in much of Scandinavia’s natural areas, so there is less need for boats because you can walk, wade and fish for brown trout and Arctic char almost anywhere you like. (Atlantic salmon rivers are an exception, with private and very expensive beats on the best streams. That’s one reason my bandmates and I never fish for salmon.)
So drift boat fishing was unfamiliar at first, but we got the hang of it. The charm is apparent—you don’t have to walk, and you can just sit and cast to one trout after another. The rower ensures that you are always in perfect casting position. If you miss a fish, it’s not a big deal. A new and equally beautiful trout is always rising just around the bend.
Supposedly it is tradition in Wyoming to eat the first salmonfly you see. These bugs are so big they look fake—two inches long and meaty. When we saw the first newly hatched monster on the water, Will didn’t hesitate. “Pick it up and eat it, man!” he said. It wriggled and crunched between my teeth, but actually tasted OK, a bit herbal and grassy. No wonder the trout go wild for them.
above Will Broeder of Snake River Angler nets my first-cast fish on Wyoming’s Green River. The Green is very close to my idea of the perfect trout river: quite remote, with stunning surroundings and just the right size. It’s not so big that it feels intimidating and not so small that it gets predictable.
That’s How We Roll
A few months before the tour, a guy named Will Hensley had contacted us. He wanted us to come to a newly opened place called the Meadows on Rock Creek. We reached out to Jason Borger, who served as our bullshit filter while we planned the tour, and asked him if we should go for it. Jason replied, “Well, if somebody offered me private luxury accommodations on one of Montana’s blue-ribbon trout streams for free, I’d probably take them up on it.”
Rock Creek was teeming with trout—cutthroat, rainbows, browns and brook trout, all wild fish. The main attraction for us were the cutthroat, since this would be our only real chance of hooking up with them. We caught plenty, incredibly beautiful, good-sized fish. Though the guides wanted us to fish hopper-droppers and Woolly Buggers whenever the fishing slowed, we had learned our lesson. No Scandinavian mumbling or apologies. You just have to say no.
“Only one dry fly for us, sorry. That’s how we roll.”
above My first cast in America produced my first American trout. That fish really brought everyone´s shoulders down, and I find low shoulders to be a prerequisite for success in flyfishing—as well as for most other things in life, including making music.
Hubris on the Missouri
Craig, MT, has 40 residents, three huge fly shops, a restaurant and a bar. It also has plenty of guides, lots of huge cars and about as many drift boats. There we met John Arnold, a rock-solid guy who co-runs Headhunters Fly Shop. He took two days off work to show us the Missouri along with his colleagues Whitney Gould and Kurt Michels.
The Mighty Mo—it is a huge river, and it’s completely packed with trout. The hatches are incredible, a real wall-to-wall carpet, and the insects are tiny. A size-14 mayfly is a big bug on the Missouri—quite the juxtaposition compared to our Green River float.
Given that the water was very high, John insisted we fish from a boat since it is forbidden to walk along the river on private land in Montana. After a few casts, John said, “You’re never gonna catch anything with that cast.”
He was giving it to me straight. I had tried a standard Norwegian dry fly presentation: let a 50- to 60-foot cast drop gently to the water 10 feet upstream of the pod of rising fish—at least five large trout were close together, sipping size-18 mayfly spinners, hugging the riverbank. John was right. Turns out Nordic-style dry fly fishing doesn’t work in high water on the Missouri.
After some fumbling, I swallowed my pride and asked for help. John’s advice was straightforward. 1. Cast short and quite hard, almost straight downstream. The fly should not land more than eight inches upstream of the fish. 2. Don’t shoot line on the presentation because that might make the leader drift in front of the fly, and the fish will never take. 3. Fish a shorter leader. Since the fish are hanging two inches below the surface, they see only a tiny part of it. 4. It’s almost never the fly that’s the problem; it’s the drift. When you’ve had 100 good drifts over the fish, you can consider changing the fly. You haven’t had a single good drift over the fish yet.
A steep learning curve. I rerigged with John’s instructions and tried again. John said, “I like that cast,” and splash! A freakishly strong, 100-percent-wild rainbow trout was suddenly a yard in the air.
“See? You’re doing it, man,” John said.
above Marc Crapo with a rainbow from the Henry’s Fork River, ID. We finally managed to talk Marc into doing some fishing himself and it didn’t take long before he hooked this beauty.
Shangri-La
We knew Idaho’s Henry’s Fork of the Snake River to be sacred ground in American dry fly fishing. The upper stretch, the Railroad Ranch in Harriman State Park, is particularly mythical. Almost every angler we spoke to during the tour told us we had to fish it.
The next day was the last fishing day of the tour, and it felt right to spend it at “the Ranch.” This five-mile-long stretch of the river is quite special. The river is 150 feet wide, slow-flowing and knee-deep. You can cross it anywhere. The riverbed consists of gravel and small stones, with large tufts of aquatic plants. Most of the water in the river comes straight from the ground a few kilometers upstream in Big Springs. Drift boats are prohibited and there is no road along the river, so you have to walk. There are only rainbow trout there, and the fishing is known to be challenging and highly technical, with large selective fish that have seen everything in terms of flies. We were advised to hike a couple miles without fishing, even if we happened to see rises while walking.
The day was hot, with the sun scorching from a cloudless sky—not ideal conditions for green drakes, in other words. After an hour of searching, we found a fish rising gently to tiny spinners. It was Tapani’s turn to fish, and after many fly changes and countless casts, he managed to entice it with a sparse CDC Rusty Spinner on a size-18 hook. The fish was beautiful and well-fed, but it showed clear signs of having been caught and released many times. Both corners of its mouth were damaged and an old, rusty dry fly was stuck in its left jaw, with 15 inches of 6x trailing behind.
We didn’t find any more rising fish that morning. In the afternoon, the weather changed, and it started to blow and rain hard. During the day, we had seen a few golden stoneflies crawling around. They’re not as large as the salmonfly, but still enormous. Joona put on an imitation that he got from flyfishing guide Marc Crapo and blind-fished along one of the islands in the wind. Up came the last fish of the trip, a beautiful rainbow trout we measured at 21.5 inches.
above Waiting for the green drakes to start popping on the Henry’s Fork. Marc Crapo really had us figured out, and his way of fishing was just right. He knew the river and predicted the start of the hatch within a five-minute margin.
The evening before, we’d had an appointment with Marc Crapo, aka Von Beardly. Marc was a colorful and likable guy who understood how we like to fish. He wanted to show us another part of the Henry’s Fork, a half-hour drive downstream of the Ranch.
That evening, we followed Marc’s old van through a beautiful landscape with the Grand Tetons in the background, taking smaller and smaller roads until Marc stopped the car, pulled out five camping chairs and said it was time to sit by the riverbank and relax. The green drake hatch would start in about an hour, so now we could sit and chat a bit.
The river was large, fast, scenic—and stone-dead. Not a rise in sight. A steady stream of drift boats passed, maybe one every five minutes, a guide in the middle and two anglers with indicators and two nymphs. Wading anglers were all over the place as well, diligently blind-fishing with nymphs and indicators or streamers.
But Henry’s Fork is famous for its green drake hatches, which are intense and often short-lived. We settled into chairs, set up our gear and talked about the differences between Europe and the United States—the culture, fishing and music. We also jammed a bit with Marc, who played guitar and harmonica.
above A rainy day in Pittsburgh. Musically speaking, our gig at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh was probably the high point of the U.S. tour. It was one of those nights where the music seems to play itself—everything was easy and anything seemed possible.
Almost exactly an hour later, we saw the first rise. Ten minutes later, it was a river transformed—green drakes and feeding fish everywhere, accompanied by scores of terns and gulls. This didn’t look particularly difficult. Marc picked out a fly for me and said it was time to fish. I waded into the river with a pounding pulse, Tapani behind me, camera rolling, and aimed for a trout close to shore that rose once every five seconds. I made a decent cast, but the fish didn’t take. After five or six good drifts, the fish stopped rising. I found a new target a bit farther out in the river. Same procedure. I compared my fly to the insects on the water. It looked two sizes bigger than the natural and was too light in color, so I rummaged around in the box and found a Cripple Dun variant I’d gotten from Will Broeder in Wyoming.
The new fly looked virtually identical to the hatching drakes, and soon enough an angry trout raced downstream at an alarming speed and jumped several times. This made Marc so happy that he grabbed the guitar and performed his own Idaho song while I fought the fish, which turned out to be a wild rainbow in superb condition.
The hatch lasted for about an hour, maybe a little more, then it was over. The river went stone-dead again. We hung out a bit longer but didn’t really feel like blind-fishing after such a great dry fly session, so we packed up and headed to TroutHunter Lodge, had dinner and got ready for the evening’s concert.
The show turned out to be one of the best of the entire tour—a full house, good sound and equipment, an attentive and enthusiastic audience. Marc joined on the harmonica for “Lahppoluobbal,” a song I wrote as a tribute to a small village on the Finnmark Plateau.
As it turned out, we had an American audience after all. And with a little help from our new friends, we were able to deal with those educated American trout too. But what I’ll remember best from the tour is how people we had never met before went out of their way to make sure we had the best time possible. I’d like to be able to say that we are just as warm and hospitable in Scandinavia and Europe, but generally speaking, I’m not sure we stand a chance.
above Fredrik Hamrå covers the banks of Wyoming’s Green River with Alex Starinsky handling the oars in expert manner. Take away the boat and replace the cows with reindeer, and you’re visually pretty close to the Finnmark Plateau in northern Norway.