Ahrex Hooks Podcast

You know the feeling. The table was well laid, courses were numerous and plentiful and the company civilized and educated. Leaning back in your chair you realize that you are more than full. But then again, there’s always room for one little delicious extra snack. That was how this sea trout was feeling. It started when the sun stuck it’s crowbar in and turned winter in to early spring. The trout...

When the Humpback Whale turned sixty he changed his life and the lives of the rest of us. Our more than complicated tax system gave him a refund from tax he paid around forty years before. It’s not something you can understand you just accept it. Bottom line was that he suddenly had money to spend so he bought a boat. The Humpback Whale had spent a good part of his youth in southern Greenland. Lif...

“Can you say that again, please?” I looked at my physiotherapist with all the hope I could establish. The reason why I paid him a visit was, if not grim, no fun at all. For years I’ve been having heavy headaches combined with the muscles in my neck and shoulders getting stuck. The worst days can put me on the sofa horizontally unable to do anything but sleep. Pain is one thing, but feeling dizzy i...

You have to admire people that work. And not only work, but do it day in and day out without weekends, holidays, leave of absence or other of mankind’s inventions, laws and regulations. Mr. Murphy is one of the very few. I can’t believe that he has never ever taken a day off or even packed sunscreen and bathing trunks and escaped to the beach. That would never happen. Mr. Murphy is a guy with incr...

Summer nights are full of light here in southern Scandinavia, it doesn’t really get dark. At the end of April we start fishing in the evening and long into the night. It can be hard to take care of family and job when you are pretty wasted from too little sleep, or having a ”fishing hangover”, as the Bricklayer has named it. In the middle of July we have to abandon our favourite spot in the tidal...

“I can’t see anything.”  The windscreen was lightning up as if I was staring straight into a galaxy at close range. “Don’t worry”, said the anthropologist beside me. “Neither can I.” We had just passed a curve when the sun hit us from the north. That wouldn’t normally make sense, but when you are north of the Arctic Circle at midnight in the middle of summer it does. I had to hit the brake of my t...

“I’ve seen some bears there lately.” My friend, The Baker, blinked to his partner in crime, we laughed but he had planted a seed of doubt about the wisdom in camping the place we had just told him about. My fellow countryman moved up here north of the Arctic Circle many years ago because he’s so fund of fishing and hunting. He got so well integrated that he even won some competitions in cross-coun...

The valley is settled between high mountains that shield it from the morning sun. That gives the strange blue light I was walking around in, taking careful steps making sure to stay on the path. The reason was obvious, I could see several makeshift red flags standing in the field not far from the small group of tents. Each flag marked a spot where a landmine had triggered, a mean weapon that keeps...

The Bricklayer and I were having an argument. We had just landed on the shore of the channel and were rigging our rods when it broke out. It wasn’t loud and agitated, just imagine two old salmon fishermen discussing which of the old river keeper’s daughters are the prettiest and you’ve got the idea. Normally we get along without any differences and are both pretty tolerant but this time we had hit...

She’s sweet; there’s nectar dripping from her lips and I’m the happiest bumblebee in the northern hemisphere. Our blanket is laid out on the beach at one of the hottest places you can hunt for sea trout, but I don’t give a damn. We’ve known each other for some years, but this is our first real date. My espresso pot is at hand together with the best chocolate I could find in town. The sea in front...

With the launch of the SA210 Bob Clouser Signature we’ve been working for a while on setting up an interview with the legend himself. We established a video- and audiofeed to Bob and Morten and Lars had the privilege of talking with Bob for an hour and half about a bit of everything. Bob has had a long career in fly fishing and is so full of great and interesting (and entertaining) stories. We thi...

I’m walking behind my fishing buddies when the thought suddenly hits me: “We are a mess, a platoon of misery.” The name of the place is very fitting, translated from my native tongue into English, “The last line of defence” and we are going to defend it. Just in front of me is the bricklayer. He’s been shovelling concrete, loading bricks and climbing ladders for more than 35 years. It’s always a w...

We were three boys roaming all the waters we could reach riding on our bikes. Our tackle boxes on the back of our bikes always announced our arrival driving on a gravel road with the sound of lures, spoons and hooks bumping around in them. This was our favourite, exclusive and very secret spot. A moat surrounding one of the many castles that were buildt more than five hundred years ago at the sout...

Every country got it’s national and seasonal dishes my own isn’t an exception. Every new years eve good fish is, in my opinion, tribulated and I’ll never understand it…we boil cod. How somebody ever came of with the idea that it should be fantastic to turn this palatable meat with a perfect consistency into blubber is a mystery to me. The prize of cod go sky high before the end of the year and eve...

I’ve got a teenager in the house. When she’s not in school she resides on the couch with four screens and her cockatiel, a very big personality in a very small body. Like every other teenager, I thought when I was fifteen that I was the centre of the universe, orbited by millions of butlers and it's kind of the same for my daughter too. Well, that’s just the way it is with teenagers you have to li...

The island I grew up and still live on has got one river; the rest are small and very small streams. Even though they are small they produce an incredible amount of sea trout. In my early teenage days the river was way too far away and the sea a totally unsolved mystery. My friends and I roamed the moats and small lakes and that was about it, but it didn’t relieve the itch enough. In search of a c...