In August 2015, Håkan Stenlund, Ted Logardt and I, got the chance to work together within a tourism development project in Swedish Lapland. The focus was to create a much stronger story and brand around the Baltic salmon in Swedish Lapland. Sweden’s Arctic destination – Swedish Lapland, is a relatively young destination for salmon anglers, which meant that we needed to tell a lot of stories in a short amount of time. Besides telling the stories, we also agreed that we wanted to do it together with the best in the business, so choosing the Hooké crew from Canada felt natural. Along with being great at what they do, they would, hopefully, be able to create a buzz and a vibe around the Baltic salmon. And sure enough, they did that!
Hooké also saw a possibility in portraying the local salmon junkies and let them tell their own story, which turned out better than any of us had hoped for. In June of 2016, we picked up the Hooké crew of five at Luleå Airport; Émile David, Charles-Alexandre Coultier, Alexis Pageau, Stuart Davis and Hugo “Supertramp” Perrin. For the following ten days, everything was chaotic, not because of our unstructured planning done by three creative minds, but because the fishing was great, really great. And the result of the trip has been amazing. The footage was better than what we hoped for and the response even better. Of course, we did more movies during 2017, but you’ll have to be patient if you want to see those!
Having a home river where you accept good and bad years and where you know there’s a realistic chance to catch a 40 lbs or larger salmon is such a privilege. But that privilege also comes with responsibility. We need to actively work towards a strong long-term management of the Baltic salmon. If we do this right, we will probably be sitting on some of the best salmon rivers in the world, when it comes to the numbers and their average weight.
One thing we can do is to spread the word about the rivers, getting people to travel to Swedish Lapland and experience our fantastic rivers and big salmon, and then be able to show the politicians that there is money in salmon tourism and that the salmon are worth a long-term commitment. As a fly-fisher we cannot take our salmon stocks for granted, we all need to get involved somehow, to make sure that the stocks won’t disintegrate in the future. If we want to catch them, we need to support them!
Lars Munk is a Business & Product Developer and full-time Salmon junkie at Loop Tackle and Heart of Lapland! Check him out on Instagram @larsmunkloop!
Photos courtesy of Hooké. If you don’t already follow them on Instagram, you should fix that now @hookeqc!
Be sure to check out our other piece with Hooké below!
