A new management structure for the River Hofsá will be launched in 2011. Fishing opportunities will be offered to all those who have previously been river clients and a few new groups will be welcomed.
The Hofsa river will be changing hands in mid season in a highly unusual twist of events. The leash holder over the last eleven years will release the river into the hands of its owners on August the 19th. AT the moment it is not clear who will be managing the river in the long run.
The managers of Hofsa have launched a great new website at http://www.hofsa.is/ The web is a huge improvement from their former web, which wasn‘t though as bad as that statement might indicate!
Hofsa‘s season finished recently and the river had a good solid total, a handfull of salmon more than last season. There were grilse lacking this year as was the case last year, but the size of the mws runs made up for it.
Hofsa is doing well this season and recently 795 salmon had ben entered into the catch book for Hofsa and the tributary Sunnudalsa. What‘s more, the average weight is outstanding and mws‘s are prominent in the catch.
Hofsa is a rather late river by Icelandic standards but it is ticking away nicely and giving great joy to its clients according to this report from Jim Utaski, a Hofsa veteran of 22 years. A prime time on the river is still to come so it looks like an excellent season!
Hofsa is improving all the time and every beat is producing salmon. Most of the catch so far has been big salmon, mws‘s, but grilse runs are starting to dominate and they seem to be very strong, just like in the neighbouring Sela.
Hofsa has started extreamly well this season and having been flogged with flies for ten and a half days, 108 salmon have been recorded. 70 percent have been mws salmon, the rest being grilse.
Hofsa got off to a great start last Saturday, 12 salmon were landed, all of them mws‘s. The start was delayed by four days compared to last season and paid off as fish were on every beat and quite a number of salmon were hooked and lost as well.
The Hofsa Angling Club, outfitters of Hofsa over the last decade have recently struck a deal with the rivers owners to hold on to the river to the end of 2011.
In 2007, an article was released by fisheries biologist Þórólfur Antonsson reflecting on the work done on Hofsa by placing wild salmon above the unaccesable fosspool in order for them to spawn in the prolific moorland part of the river.
The Atlantic salmon season of 2009 is fast building on the horizon. And it comes on the back of such a stunning record season that hardly anybody knows what to expect this year. But for the most part people have concluded that the coming season has a considerable margin for slipping from 2008 without losing a label of excellence.
The Hofsá season was fair in 2008 although it did fall beneath the ten year average. It was partially made up by a massive average weight of previously unheard of proportions. Hofsá may well have had Iceland’s heaviest salmon of the season, as a 110 cm fresh run monster was caught in early July.