Vatnsdalsa: High average weight
One of Vatnsdalsa's elder statesmen about to be released to fight another day after a 45 minute skirmish. The photo is copyright of www.vatnsdalsa.is
Most rivers in Iceland are doing very well this season despite some draught disruptions, however there is a lack of grilse in many of the northland rivers resulting in higher average weights than we have seen for many years. Which also means of course that there are more mws's around.
Looking for instance at Vatnsdalsa the river had produced an excellent solid total of 643 salmon last night. It is a 100 percent catch and release river which guides do not use landing nets with built in scales, so they instead use a formula constructed by the specialists at the Bureau of Fresh Water Fisheries which is generally among anglers known and proven to be very modest. But according to the rivers catch book the average length of the Vatnsdalsa salmon this season has been 73,11 cm which gives an average weight of 4,37 kilos according to the formula. That counts as just under 9 pounds in Icelandic pounds and very close to 11 pounds while using the lbs. This goes to show that there is a far bigger ration of mws's versus grilse than usual this season, even far bigger by Vatnsdalsa's own high standards.
Outfitter Pétur Pétursson has told us that the grilse are lacking in numbers, yet it is not to late for some later than usual runs. Grilse can be unpredictable and while more of them should be in the river already (providing that they exist at all) late season runs are far from being unheard of.
Vatsdalsa has had its fair share of the big boys this season, over the past few days salmon of 100, 99 and 98 cm have been landed. Bigger fish have been sighted but not yet been hooked and landed.
