Finally the weather is back to normal, sunshine with drifting clouds and most downstream winds (if any at all), and a rise in the temperature, which was needed, especially in the river.
Our old Norwegian friends was back on the river, with Reid Hagelin and Nic Jepson as the ones who’s visited us every year since the “beginning”. Saying “Norwegians” I might offend a couple, since they were Danes and as everyone knows the Danes used to rule Norway, so it might have been more correct to call everyone Danes….
The river is still high (+10 to -10cm) so the fish are running quiet fast through our stretch of river, so it’s an interesting type of fishing, where you bump into a run of fish, for later to be searching for them again. The result is a little irregular fishing, meaning there’s no significant favourite beat or pool, you just simply doesn’t know what to expect when you change beat every session.
The fishing increased during the week, the daily catch just kept climbing, whether it’s because of the typical “getting used to the river”-syndrome or the number of fish in the river simply increased we don’t know. One thing that both Reid and Nic noticed after fishing for a couple of days, was that the fish aren’t showing as they used to in earlier years, even though there’s fish in the pool, they don’t jump or “head and tail” like we’ve seen in earlier years, but fish is definitely moving, since we’ve seen the bow-waves from larger numbers of fish.
The old myth about horseshoes bringing luck, was proven to be true. Though Reid’s superstitious mind believed the opposite, I managed to sneak a horseshoe in his backpack (in the hope of it would jinx him not to catch fish) it proved the opposite, it brought luck, it must have done, it simply can’t be skill. Anyway the horseshoe passed from backpack to backpack, and it brought the “carrier” luck every single session (damn, I think we’ve been here for too long now).
One of our Danish guest, Kaare, chose to celebrate his 60’s years birthday with us, and we did all we could to throw him a decent party, with gifts, cake, songs and we even managed to create a couple of Danish-flags, but best of all, Kaare got the greatest present at the river that evening, a nice seatrout even a Dane can be proud of.
Good water height (+10 to –15cm), colour and temperature (8 to 15C) gives us nearly perfect conditions, but our experience on the river tells us that strong downstream wind is to prefer, the fish is more active and defiantly more willing to rise to the fly. Now the water is dropping, and we hope the fish will travel a bit slower, and as seen before; fish that has already past us, falls back from the higher beats.
We’re still fishing intermediate or sinktip lines, but the fly size has decreased since last week, now it’s smaller nymph’s with rubberlegs like EMB or Stonefly nymph’s, in the evening though it’s big black tubes or wollybugger type flies.
No. of rods: 11
Top-rod: Reid Hagelin (15)
Biggest fish: Jørn Hansen and Arild Reime (both 17½ lbs)
Avg. weight: 9,4 lbs
Top Fly: EMB (Estancia Maria Behety)
