The ultra small grilse do grow up in our rivers!
A super small grilse ala 2008. There were quite a lot of them around on the east coast, but next year may see them return far bigger. Photo by Jón Eyfjörð.
Despite Iceland having a record season in 2008 poor grilse runs in the east and northeast rivers were still aparent, not to mention the fact that many of the grilse that did arrive were ridiculously small, many of them hardly exceeding 2 pounds. The Icelandic Institution of Fresh Water Fisheries looked into the matter, as did a top local guide, Vivvi Orrason, who told us an intriguing story.
Vivvi is the son of internationally acclaimed salmon conservationist Orri Vigfússon, the founder of the NASF, the North Atlantic Salmon Fund which has bought out countless salt water salmon nets all over Europe and North America. Vivvi has been a guide on Icelandic rivers for years and his favorite is the east coast river Selá. He told us this story:
Efrifoss, where Vivvi caught the 14 pounder.
„Three years ago I was fishing myself. I was fishing Efrifoss, the pool at the top of the river when I hooked and landed a 14 pounder. It had been tagged but the sign attached to the salmon was obviously quite old and I had to scrape algae off it to be able to read it. But once I could read the info, it turned out that the salmon had been caught in Langhylur, the pool at the bottom of the river two seasons earlier. It had been very small, only about 2 pounds. And what‘s more, the angler who had caught it two years earlier was a French fellow that was actually fishing in the same group as me, so I could shake his hand and thank him for releasing it at the time. I remember well when I first saw these very small grilse in the river. I didn‘t like it at all and thought the fewer the better. I don´t look at it that way anymore, obviously. They obviously have as good a chance as any salmon of surviving and returning bigger.
As far as the fisheries scientists are concerned, they took several of the ultra small grilse in for research. There was a common theory that they were the result of smolts leaving the river to late the summer before. After reading the scales however, it turned out that had not been the case. They had indeed left the river at the normal time so to speak. They instead brought up the theory that these fish had for some reason ended up floundering in the very cold East Iceland Current instead of finding their usual fruitful sea grazing area, which is......somewhere else! Or, for some reason, that their normal feeding grounds had for some reason been barren this year.
