Fine improvement for Vatnsdalsa in 2008
The season of 2008 was very favorable for Vatnsdalsa and the river went 383 salmon better than in 2007 which was considered a respectable season, just over the ten year average of 817 salmon. The 2008 total turned out to be 1.236 salmon, all but just over one hundred from the main salmon beats. The other one hundred and so and so were caught on the trout beats in the middle of the river. This was not a record, the top season on Vatnsdalsa so far reached the giddy heights of 1.582 salmon. But you cannot always have records and 2008 was a great season. The best for years.
As usual, Vatnsdalsa had it’s fair share of Iceland’s biggest salmon, the tone being given in early July when a 100 cm cock fish was of such a massive build that it weighed in the guides net at 12 kílos or 24 pounds! That was a trend in many of Iceland’s rivers, the big fish were so fat and heavy from their high sea pastures that none had seen anything like it for years and years. Just when everybody was starting to fear that the big ones were a dying breed, back they came in 2008 and we hope that it was not just a short casual visit but a sign of greater things to come.
Before the end of the season, salmon ranging from 20 to 26 pounds were in double figures and big mws’s were all over the place. And as Vatnsdalsa is a fly only river, many of the fights were of titanic proportions on light tackle.
Several hundred trout were caught on the salmon beats as well, char, stationary browns and sea trout. In fact some of the pools such as Hólakvörn are so packed with trout that anglers can switch to five star trout fishing if the salmon fishing is slow. On the trout beats there was a marked come back for the sea char that have been spiraling down over the last few years. They were not back to full strength but the signs were good that they might be coming back. The photo above is a 102 cm cock fish caught late in the season.
