Ice And Flies

[Leica Sport Optics]

Ice and flies

Iceland is a piece of earth which is only 20 million years old and which represents an adventure at each step on the volcanic ground. Regarding fishing, Iceland is not only one of the very best spots in the world, it is simply unique. As unique as the fact to discover it in a father-and-son-trip, accompanied by a guide who gives the right advices to help the two beginners in their conquest of the wild rivers.

Hunting with a fishing rod … did you ever think about it ? It’s what we wanted to experience and obviously the only way to achieve it was fly fishing. To lure a fish with a (most of the time) handmade “fly” is not something that you master in a few seconds, so if you think about easy fishing it’s not really the right place to be. Nevertheless, once arrived in the so called Mid Highlands, a kind of plateau located roughly 70 km south west of Blonduos and north west of the Eiriksjoküll glacier, we immediately began to cast our first flies in a crystal clear water that was surprisingly low. No drop of rain in the last two months.

But as a beginner you can always count on a bit of luck and we were quite optimistic. We were here to learn and when you are in the field you always do. The fish started to bite during our first day in the water: Arctic char, brown trout, that was our quarry and those beasts didn’t surrender without a harsh fight against the rods and reels but we landed a few of them. Catch and release is almost a religion for the fly fishermen, but as beginners we were allowed to keep our first fish … and taste it. Delicious !

The magic part of a fishing trip to Iceland is not only the incredibly beautiful landscape, but also the phenomenal birdlife. Thousands of birds from which some are quite rare, are following you on the shores and in the water, sometimes at close distance but even at close range we appreciated our compact binos to admire the diversity of the feathers and the behavior of our flying companions. By the way, the binos were also very helpful in having a closer look to the flies we used and to the knots that we were supposed to achieve after three days of teaching.


The last days of the experience were spent on the Snaefellness peninsula on our own, after a short presentation of the rivers and lakes from the Lysa lake system. Even if the peninsula is home of the famous Snaefellsjökull glacier that inspired Jules Vernes on his trip to the center of earth, most of the rivers here are fed only by the rain. We tried hard, with nevertheless a fairly nice sea trout which was landed, but the fish stayed at sea or rather in the ocean. And this is what we did as well: a great sightseeing tour around the peninsula where the cliffs that are facing the North Atlantic are home of thousands of seabirds which gave us a last spectacular and magic moment in Iceland.

WRITTEN BY
Philippe Jaeger

 

[gizmo]

Love it! I cant wait until next month, we'll be fishing the Arkansas River