STILL CATCHING
Whilst there have been short windows of calm, the weather since the 20s of August has been particularly unkind to us in the south of Iceland. Strong wind, heavy rain and many days of coloured water has meant our fishers have not had the opportunity to enjoy the kind of catch numbers we would hope for. Having said that there have been some amazing fish caught throughout this period with fresh fish caught into mid September and some very notable salmon into October also.
We are approaching the final days of the Salmon fishing season on East Ranga and we have currently landed a respectable 2500+ fish. Catches lately have been remarkably good when conditions have allowed and there are a large number of fish still in the system. With luck they will fair well over the winter and possibly return to sea in spring as kelts to run again in autumn 2024.
It’s never a great way to reflect on a season but to look back at the past few months we realise the East Ranga has been amongst the “least worst”. Spending so much of our time on the ground it is easy to become quite isolated and focus only on the very near surroundings. East Ranga catches were a little disappointing numerically but compared to other rivers across the island fishing has still been strong. A persistent lack of water left some of the ever water dependent west coast rivers on their knees, and whilst not rain dependant for flow, the lack of rainfall likely effected East Ranga more than we’d hoped also. The little fresh oxygenated water coming in from creeks and tributaries whilst the river was low was met with cold glacial melt water meaning coloured stale water. Nothing makes fish less aggressive than stale oxygen low water. And whilst this has spread the seasonal catches out over a longer period it has made it very hard to predict when the fish would be caught.
We cant control the weather and in Iceland it’s very hard to predict but what is possible is giving the smolts a fighting chance of at sea. From well protected and oxygenated ponds these strong little fish were released under cloud covered nights and observed along their journey down river. Well fed and at ideal migration weight these smolts have the strongest chance of making the most of the feeding grounds and coming back to grace us with their presence in the next two seasons.
If we were to label the 2023 season it would lean towards a “Big Fish” season. We had pulses of grilse runs come in but there was a long and consistent main run of bigger fish. On the back of a good smolt releases in July 2022 and July 2023 we are hoping to see a good mix of both Salmon and Grilse arriving from early June 2024.
Do get in touch for availability for the 2024 season.
