Langa: Six 100-plus pools last season!
An angler is into a fish at the top part of Strengir. Below, a late season Langa grilse with a heavy Snaelda tube protruding from its jaws. Photos by Einar Falur.
As we have reported, last season was a raging success with a record overall total and records broken on many individual rivers. One of the rivers was Langa which smashed its former record of twenty years. A look at statistics shows us just how good the best pools are.
The record that fell was quite impressive and while the river has come forward in leaps and bounds over the last several years following a downswing the quetion always prevailed: Will Langa ever surpass the old record. Well, now we know the answer turned out to be YES. The old record was 2.405 salmon, while last season the total stopped at 2.972. It would have surpassed three thousand had the conditions not become devastating over the final week.
The fishing had been outstanding but then the regular late season rains overstepped the boundaries of enough is enough! The river not only flooded but mudslides at the headwaters made sure that the muddy color of the river prevailed not only all of the final week, but for at least a week more. The fishing simply froze, leaving us asking the question: What if?
Just under 3.000 salmon is a huge haul in a river of Langa‘s stature. Fish counters in the river also told us that there were at least some 5.000 salmon left in the river to spawn...to many some specialists said.
Obviously some pools are better than others and Langa always has a selected few that are best. With Langa only being moderatly average in volume, one can see that individual pools producing over one hundred salmon over the season are nothing less than astonishing places to fish. Seven pools on Langa produced such a haul.
The best was Strengir, a massive 246 salmon! It is only a relatively short and narrow run! But it is close to the sea and directly below Skuggafoss with the first of several fish ladders. Fourth was Breidan, 120 salmon, which is directly below Strengir. It is the widening of the river as the current from Strengir slows down. So wa can in fact say that this short stretch of river produced 366 salmon!
Pool number two was Bardarbunga with 187 salmon and third Alfgerdisholt 130 salmon. Fifth came Armot, the pool at the very to of the main salmon beats with 115 salmon and Upper Hvitsstadahylur finished with 107 salmon. Close by were Hreimsaskvorn with 93 and Bjargstrengur with 82. The predictions for the coming season on Langa are excellent although it would be wrong to expect more records. But who knows?
