Vatnsdalsa: Consistent excellence these days
Vatnsdalsa is better than ever these days and every day is producing 22-26 salmon. It is the best early season over the eight years the current managers have operated the river. The grilse are running strong these days but there are sustantial numbers of mws‘s also.
According to the outfitters website, yesterday evening had seen 274 salmon landed with an average weight of 3,8 kilos. It has fallen slightly over the past few days as the grilse have been ticking in. It is quite remarkable to observe that despite frequent high northern winds up north, 101 recorded salmon had taken hitched tubeflies and one of the Vatsdalsa guides told us that the wind had been blowing so hard at times that they had seemed to be observing the salmon in profile as they waded through the waves to snatch the flies. It was an awesome sight they told us and individual salmon at times needed up to four attempts before catching the flies and by then they had become so angry and agressive that they had shattered the surface in a blurr of spray!
Apart form the hitched tubes, the Black Frances is the best fly with 24 hits, the Blue Charm with 16 and the Sunray Shadow with 15. A lot of big trout are caught alongside the salmon on Vatnsdalsa but they hardly get mentioned! Photo above is a recent one from Vatnsdalsa and shows one of the guides about to put back a nice looking mws.
