Summer of ‘11
I finally got around to editing material from our 2011 trip to Norway. It was about the time, no doubt. Here you have a short story about what can happen in one sunny afternoon if things are going as they should (and as all you salmon fishing enthusiastics out there well know, they certainly don’t always do that) accompanied with few stills and some notes, this time in English for our international visitors.
This video should be enjoyed in HD and full screen to catch all the action.
All (well ok, opening scene is from the next day, but all the fishing is done in the same day) this material was filmed in just one day
on our favorite river Repparfjordelva in Finnmark, northern Norway. It was early august and the weather had been warm and sunny for quite some time, but it had rained also, so even if the water was warm, well over 17°C at highest if I recall it right, the water level was still quite ok. Just the perfect conditions for a dry fly!
First evening gave us hints of things to come: In just a couple hours I got a few nice rises to our favorite salmon dry fly Pompero and Samuli was able to haul in one nice grilse form this unbelievable small hole in the middle of the hardest rapids. It was quite a surprise, since it was more pocket water kinda place where you would expect to catch trout, but not salmon.
The next morning we started early. The sun was already blazing from the clear blue sky; there were literally no cloud in sight. We drove to one of our favorite pools in the river and were really happy to find it unoccupied. The fishing was good right from the beginning and the salmon were banging our dries like crazy and we had the whole pool just for us. After missing 4 or 5 rises I finally got my strike calibrated (we belong the “strike as fast as you possibly can” –school) and hooked a couple of nice grilse. Samuli also had one, a nice start for the day.
Rod bending under the clear blue sky. Photo by Samuli Tursas.
Sometimes things just seem to fall into their right places. First photo by Samuli Tursas.
Fishing slowed down after an hour or so and we thought it might be a good idea to move a few kilometers upstream. Since the fish seemed to be in good moods I took out the video camera and started shooting. It took little bit over one minute of filming for Samuli to catch that first fish on video. We switched places and Samuli shot for five more minutes until I caught the other fish. Fishing was just red hot! We got few rises from the same pool after that but it really was quite disturbed, so we decided to change the place again and went to this one pool that has produced quite a few big fish for us in the past. I stayed back to shoot and Samuli sneaked to good position. It was his second cast when the big one rose to the fly. It was quite unbelievable and I even got it all on camera.
The following day we took a hike to tributary to the main river. There were a lot of fish in the river, you could spot them from high cliffs, but they weren’t in the mood to bite anymore even if the weather was still warm. I don’t know if they were already sensing the coming change in the weather or what. Samuli caught one with Red Francis, but otherwise it was just the opposite of the previous day.
Waterfall.
It’s not always that easy. Photo by Samuli Tursas.
The next day a cold front rolled over Finnmark and the temperature dropped to around 5°C. The worst thing was that even if it was cold and cloudy it really didn’t rain at all so the water level as well as the temperature went down and the fishing shut off completely. It wasn’t a big surprise that I didn’t catch anything after the first day, since I really can’t catch salmon with anything else than dry flies (last time I caught anything under the surface was probably in 2008 and yes, I do fish a lot with more traditional methods also, especially in cold conditions) and while dries can work in cold water also (2012 we got rises when water temperature was well under 10°C), our experience is that the
water temperature needs to be rising to get the salmon interested in anything on the surface. What was really surprising was that Samuli, who is much more versatile fisherman and usually able to find fish in any conditions, didn’t have any success either. We fished for five more days and only thing we caught was one beautiful brownie that was sipping mayflies off the surface. Only smaller trout dry I had with me was the traditional Finnish caddis pattern Nalle Puh which was not really anything close to those mayflies, but gladly the fish wasn’t too picky and accepted the offer anyway. Traditional trout fishing was a nice change of pace especially when the salmon fishing was slow and definitely something we will be looking more closely in the future.
I do fish wet flies when the conditions demand, but just can’t catch anything with them.
Norway, you just gotta love the place.