A stunning fish comes to the sunray.

Despite a reduced over all salmon catch has decreased somewhat since 2020 at East Ranga, the catch figures for 2021 do not show the full story at all.

It was a great pleasure to make the short trip north to visit the Reykjavik office and the Aurora Lodge team this week.

As luck would have it international travel resumed with a list of ever changing tests and forms. As we battled to keep abreast of these the Salmon were making their way back to Iceland to visit the mighty East Ranga river system.

The second half of August saw a mixture of Icelandic, English and Spanish clients at East Ranga. Having worked our way through a month of low clear and cold water in search of rain; in late August we got it. All of it.

The fishing has slightly picked up as a few quieter beats started produce a few more fish. We have had a few days of 50 fish as well as a few 35-40. This has propelled us to 2000 fish.

We are regularly seeing fish in the high teens and early 20s and the percentage of multi sea winter fish so far is around 40%. A staggering statistic.

Yesterday we hit 1000+ fish. The river is in great condition and was carrying a little colour. The kind of colour we like. A greenish tint of melt water but not so coloured as to require enormous fly tactics.

If you compare the ‘headline’ East Ranga catches year on year to 2020, you might think that 2021 is very, very slow fishing! However the quality and size of the fish being landed in 2021 is truly outstanding and certainly makes up in many respects for the sheer volume experienced in 2020.

The last few days has been really interesting. We had a team of mainly outright beginners at the lodge and despite only just learning to cast they did really rather well.

What a few days we have had. Amazing multi sea winter salmon running the river and numbers really starting to build.

we would normally have made use of this pre-season month with at least one advanced party to the lodge to wake things up and get things ready. Luckily we have an incredibly capable team on the ground who have done a frankly incredible job transforming the lodge ready for 2021.

Yesterday afternoon was a real treat. We met up with Neal D on beat 7 and in his words he was “a bit down in the bows”. Fishing had been quite slow from coloured water and fish were being caught but just not on Neal’s beat.

One thing Iceland is well known for is recording catch statistics. Whilst a great resource the East Ranga report linked above offers much more detail in terms of a break down and analysis of beats through the months.

Alicja, Lenka, Gunnar and Jonas have been working hard these past weeks to complete the renovation of the guest rooms at Aurora Lodge, the East Ranga fishing lodge, and I am delighted to report this is done.

When the season finally closed on October 18, Head Guide Gunnar submitted the final catch stats which sat at 9070 salmon.

We are now in the final days of the 2020 season. As of yesterday 8,544 salmon and a few hundred sea trout have been landed in 115 days to an average of around 16 rods per day.

The ’prime’ season at East Ranga has ended, the all time record catch of 7,473 has been exceeded, and the lodge has now closed for the winter.

We have been very lucky. The run this summer has been extraordinary, the season has gone past 6,500 salmon and still the river is receiving fish fresh off each tide.

As the total catch for the East Ranga passes 5,000 for the season, maybe its as good a moment as any to take a deep breath of fresh Icelandic air and reflect on the past 2 months.