Professional Fitness Consultant to the Norwegian Olympic delegation. Coach for the Norwegian National Casting Team since 1985. Responible for fly casting instrucor certification programme at The Norwegian Association of Hunters and Anglers (NJFF).

Who bent this rod?
"You're kidding me", I thought to myself the first time I laid eyes on the rod with the mysterious handle, glancing nervously around for hidden cameras. The next thing my mind told me, after the first few cast, was that it was great to be Norwegian; as Norwegian as the inventor and, of course, the rod.

Norwegians are generally thoroughbred traditionalists, with a genetic scepticism to all things new. The best example comes from one of our national sports; skijumping(the sport where skinny men with oversized skis speed down an almost vertical slope that ends in a giant jump that leads to an even more vertical slope and the idea is to fly as far as possible down the latter. Everybody were jumping with paralell skis until a strange Swede "spread his legs", became more like an airplane and suddenly started winning. Norwegians hated it, but a few years later vererybody, including the Norwegians, where jumping in this V-shape style.
In this respect, Arve Evensen has no sense of tradition. A Norwegian changing the concept of fly-rods is almost unheard of. He had taken a straight rod, bent the handle in a peculiar way and redefined fly-fishing.
Here I Was, an average, Norwegian with an inbred tunnel.vision, but also with a double-handed fly rod looking more like a futuristic machine gun. I placed my hands where I thought they should be and hoped sincerely thet the safety was on... The bent handle provided a longer pathway for the lower arm and thereby more effictive working conditions. It was almost ridiculously simple, but it worked. Longer casts with less force and the rod closer to my body; just because the lower part of the handle was moved four inches.

Within topics lke religion, poetry and romance, the soul is a literal phenomenon, in spite of the fact that science has never found it. In addition, I've found, if not proved, that in some fly-fishers the soul takes over for the brain when reality is compressed to only the necessities of life: Man, water, rod, line, fly and fish. These men and women breathe deeply, close their eyes and "go with the flow". With the real "flow" just above my knees only just outside Oslo (our beloved capital) I went with the "unreal" one, letting casts emerge on their own. Careful lifts, soft anchors, controlled deliveries and smooth transitions between different phases of complete spey-casts. My lower hand soon got used to its protruded position and the way it countered the "upper hand domination" more normal with straight rods.I cast a short glimpse into a future where fly fishermen could fish more, with a lot less strain on their bodies and felt sad for all doctors, physiotherapists and chiropractors who, in years to come, would recieve a lot fewer fly-fishing patients with chronic muscle pains.

Ijust pulled on the lower part of the handle, let my upper hand calm down considerably and let the line go. It just kept on going and has been doing so ever since. The new recipe of double handed fly.fishing i made from pure math and goes like this:



One piece of bent fly.rod + fewer muscle-fibres involved + a table spoon of pure feeling + a dash of soul =
More joy, more fish and a lot less bodily strain.

Who bent the rod? Arve Evensen did. A Norwegian. It works!

Get used to it!

Regards
Mathias Lilleheim