Langa: Statistics of a record catch
The entrance to the fish ladder and counter in Skuggafoss can be seen here just above the angler who is playing a fish in the top end of Strengir. Photo by Einar Falur.
What in fact went on in a river producing a record catch in 2008? We can have a look at Langa river which has a Vaki fish counter in Skuggafoss, a mere several hundred feet from the estuary.
According to the electronic counter, 4.109 salmon and grilse passed the counter. However, having determined that 182 may have been interfearing shadows rather then real live salmon, they were discounted making the total run up the falls 3.927. Add to that some 500 caught in the several pools below Skuggafoss and you come close to the total run. The two top producers below the falls, Strengir and Breiðan, accounted for almost 400 fish. And there were quite a few salmon holding in these bottom pools following the closure of the counter.
A grilse has grabbed a hitched fly on Lower Campari, one of the "mountain"-pools. Photo by Einar Falur.
The total catch from the river, the record, totalled 2.972 salmon. It would most certainly have flown over 3.000 had some excessive flooding during the final days of the season in late September, spurred by mudslides into the river, so muddying it up beyond any fishing that experts have hardly seen the river before in such a state.
Langa is primarily a grilse river and 3.824 of the run were grilse according to the counter. 103 were mws salmon, several of them actually very big. The grilse were overly healthy, strong and of a greater average weight than usual, pointing to top grade conditions on the feeding grounds.
Langa is not a big catch-release river, yet even if every one of the 2.472 fish caught above the ladder had been killed it would still have left 1.455 salmon in the river for spawning. A very, very healthy total indeed. However, there is is considerable voluntary catch-relaes on the river so the spawning total is far greater. The bottom line is, that Langa was in a very healthy state last year and the signs of that continuing are excellent.
