A strong start to the Icelandic Salmon Fishing Season
The 2023 Salmon fishing season has kicked off in Iceland, ushering in a wave of excitement and anticipation among fishers both at home and abroad. As rivers start to open and seasons get underway we are starting to receive early reports of catches from various rivers around Iceland.
Many of the early rivers enjoyed notable first day catches. Nordura, one of the first to open had an excellent 35 fish in the opening and have doubled that in recent days. Urridafoss, always productive early, has rewarded fishers with over 100 fish in the first few days of the season. We have had reports from some of our guides of a few fish being caught in Blanda and Thvera Kjarra has also kicked off with some stunning fresh fish being caught.
On the East Ranga river system we have had reports of fish seen running / jumping through the home pool at Holsa (east bank) and on their way into the East Ranga. We open the East Ranga on 20 June and will post a report after opening day. We have some experienced fishers in the first days of the season and we are hopeful they will find a good number of bigger fish have already eased into the system.
The East Ranga 2022 catch was made up largely of male grilse in the 5-8lb range and smaller multi sea winter salmon. We are hopeful that we will see strong runs of multi sea winter hen fish and heavy runs of good grilse from the 2022 smolts which went to sea fat and healthy. If this happens it will mean the 2023 season will feature good number of fresh salmon returning in all size classes including - with luck - a fair few salmon around the 20lb mark getting to the net.
Our neighbours at West Ranga have seen a few fish coming through their counter already which is also heartening.
Up in the north at the stunning Midfjardara there have been a number of very good quality multi sea winter fish seen running the river and resting in some of the classic holding pools, which offers exciting prospects for those fishing the opening days, and for our fishers who will start fishing there from mid July onwards. Again we will report on Midfjardara regularly over the coming weeks.
