Excellent prediction for 2011 salmon season!
A salmon takes off on the Vatnsá, Iceland's top producing river per rod last year. Photo by Terje Broman Larsen. See www.skoga@skoga.is
Recently the Icelandic Bureau of Fresh Water Fisheries held its annual conference. One of the main topics of each meating is the prediction for the pending salmon season. It turned out to be very favorable.
The main prophet is Guðni Guðbergsson and he has a style which might well be described as conservative. You will not get any fireworks out of him. Over the past few years Iceland‘s salmon rivers have been producing wildly with each of the last two seasons topping each other with new record catches.
A huge fish from Vatnsdalsa, one of Iceland's main big fish rivers. See www.vatnsdalsa.is
Both times Guðni predicted „better than average“ and then went on to say: I told you so! This year he stated that his most favored way of predicting the season in writing would be: ?????? But as he was not going to get away with that he said: „The norm is that the highs and lows go in cycles and we have obviously been in a very high cycle over the past few seasons. While we should start to come out of the clouds soon, there still have been no tell tale signs that such a shift is impending. So for me it looks most likely that the salmon fishing in Iceland in 2011 should be at least well over average, and who knows if the conditions turn out really good. They have actually been bad on occasions over the past few seasons. But the conditions in the ocean have been favorable and the same goes for the juvenile feeding grounds in the rivers. So there is no reason why the fishing should start any sort of decline this year.“
