The secondary (but not the least) inhabitant of the Laxa in Kjos
A big sea trout is tagged during early spring. Photos from Lax ehf.
One of our featured rivers is known for its quality Atlantic salmon fishing. But it has also emerged over the years as a massive sea trout river with the trout running alongside the salmon with the prime time hand in hand. This is the Laxa in Kjos, a mere hours drive from the capital of Reykjavik. Some other west coast rivers have sea trout runs as well, Grimsa and Laxa in Leirarsveit are good examples. But Kjos tops them off.
The Atlantic salmon is the extrovert in the family while the sea trout is the introvert. While anglers and guides are treated to leaping salmon all over the falls section at the bottom beat, there will be hundreds of sea trout running at the same time. They are however seldom caught and even more seldom seen at all. While the salmon leap the falls, the sea trout swim up during the night. Any given day from early to mid July the salmon will be the main event, then one morning there will be 2-3 hundred sea trout in the slower pools on the middle section. Perhaps two to three days later, following another overcast summer night of no darkness, there will be two hundred more in various pools on the same section. Many of these fish are big. A few even bigger than that. By mid August, there are literally hundreds, perhaps even thousands of sea trout in 12-14 named pools plus many unnamed in between. There are salmon in these middle beat pools as well but this is the domain of the sea trout of Laxa i Kjos.
Another big one being released in the Meadows.
This middle beat is often called the „Meadows“ or the „Free beat,“ as any Laxa angler may fish the beat any time. The pools are first come first serve. The area is so popular that many Laxa anglers never look at their alloted beats. They head for the Meadows as soon as their fishing starts. And fish them for the duration of their stay.
The pools on the Meadows are lookalikes. A cut bank on one side and a gravel beach on the other. The deep holding parts are from the middle of the river towards the cut bank. Often, by creeping upon the cut bank and peeping over the gras blades, one is taken aback by the masses of fish, mostly sea trout, but also considerable numbers of salmon thrown in. Many of the pools are very long and hold fish over their entire lenght. Most of them are slow moving, almost languid and lazy. They usually require stripping with small flies and long leaders on floating lines or sometimes intermediate. In recent years many anglers have turned to almost dead drifting dry flies on a super long leader. This works particularly well when the water levels fall during some weeks of draughts. The fish then tend to spook easily in the mirrorlike pools unless the wind is blowing briskly and anglers counter that with the long delicate leaders. The strikes are out of this world, huge bulges a long way off, closing in on the bobbing fly and then huge heads popping out of the surface film to slurp in the fly! This scenario takes place only several feet away from the angler and strong nerves are required.
A small one and a streamer fly with its feathers ruffled.
The editor of AnglingIceland has fished Laxa for years and the Meadows compete for top spot over a long fishing life. I‘m one of the many who dislikes rotating to the other beats, despite their obvious class , beauty and potency. Which says a lot about how special the Meadows are. I was once sat at the lunch table in the lodge and met two Spanish friends who where starting that afternoon. They asked me how things where going and I told them that the going was tough for the moment.
The river was low but the evenings on the Meadows were producing sea trout and some salmon as well. „We have been here before,“ they told me, „and we don‘t care about the salmon. We come for the sea trout and use all our time in the Meadows. Laxa is totally unique. Nowhere in Europe have we found such a potent sea trout river where we can fish in broad daylight with light fly tackle. In Europe, all the good sea trout fishing has to be done during night in pitch dark. We have tried it and twisted our ankles, torn our faces on shrubbery, fallen into the rivers. We don‘t like it but we love the sea trout and here we can see them, study them and catch them. And many of them are big,“ they concluded and were very happy to hear that the Meadows were full of sea trout....and salmon.
Early spring with winter conditions.
That very evening two of us found ourselves on the pool Norðurmýrarhylur, a huge, long pool, very deep at the top. It was early August and as the fishing shift stopped at nine o‘clock, there was not much time to tune in on the twilight fishing. Hardly any twilight in early August in Iceland but an overcast sky helped. Until later in August, the best thing is to pick a good pool and fish it hard over the final hour. On Norðurmýrarhylur, the two of us, sharing a rod, hooked six sea trout. We landed four, aprox 3 to 4 pounds each. The two lost were obviously larger, the bigger one looking like an 8 pounder. This was hectic sport, using a number six fly rod and stripping fast a Tiel and Blue on a number 16 silver treble. The „8 pounder“ made four frenzied attacks on the stripped fly before actually nailing it, and it fought like mad for ten minutes before breaking off. It was the most dramatic round of the evening. But the others were almost as good, as the sight of a sizable sea trout making a fast bubbling bow after your fly before taking, or not taking it, with venom, accounts for some very, very thrilling fly fishing.
We met the Spaniards at the lodge that evening. The smiles on their faces looked like they would never come off. They had hooked and landed four on dry flies during the day.....six more in the „twilight“ hour. One of them a 10 pounder. Another of 8 pounds. Who needed salmon? However, if anyone did, they were there by the thousands as well!
