Guiding @Skålestrømmen in July 2021

Published on: 15 July 2021
By TZ

Skålestrømmen Flky Fishing is closed … read more here

I just wrapped up two weeks of guiding a few days to get hut in order and fish for myself a little bit.

It were good sessions. The first group (3 brothers and a cousin) fished from Sunday evening until Thursday around lunchtime. They slept in between of course 🙂 – they clocked in a little above 300 trout. Smallest 350gr., bigger 1250 gr. Not that big but for the first time fishing that water and none of them were very experienced, but good and dedicated anglers I found this quite good.

zum Deutschen Text nach unten scrollen oder hier clicken DEUTSCH

The week after I had two guys from southern Norway as guests. They brought 3 dogs … 😀 Man, they had quite a drive. 15 hours, 1000km. It’s a long country, still they wanted to fish as soon as they saw the water. Crazy what a good fishing can do to you. They caught about 100 / 130 each in that week.

All fish a naturally reproduced, no stocking and all dry fly. It’s a crazy place. The numbers – well, even if you sleep late you start fishing around 2pm until 3 or 4 am.

That’s 14 hours fishing including brakes, say 10 hours pure fishing. The fish are rising all the time. I believe they eat in shifts. 😀 That is 140 hours fishing in one week for two people. One or two trout per hour. I guess competition fisherman can double that figure in this water. However, a competition fisherman would not like to get a 2 or 3 pounder on the hook. These show you the backing knot in no time and many hooks come back fishless and straightened.

I compare that place to a racetrack or car testing track. They say the Nurburgring has the factor 10 or higher in material strain, add the high speed and you end up with a lot of knowledge about your cars material limits in a much shorter time then using it ion regular roads. The same is here. The rising trout can be so dense that you show your fly to 3 or more fish in one drift. The standard procedure seems that they start fishing, not believing me that the presentation is key. So they mostly catch 300 to 500gr. fish, meaning young and very eager fish chasing everything.

After showing how to do a reach mend / cast and that a bigger fish is the result right away, they guests tend practice this technique. By Wednesday or Thursday latest they have it down and start to really get into it. It’s pure statistics. Experiencing the effects of a good presentation right away and work on it with the next fish which is rising just seconds after your fly came by, is priceless.

Normally there is an hour or worst case a whole winter in between such two events. Here you have this 24/7 minus 5 hours sleep. Normally this means you cast your fly to a fish every 2 to 3 minutes in the most hectic hours between 22:00 and 2:00. That’s 30 presentations per hour, 120 during a night. Mind you, this is 3 weeks in June / July we are talking about and it is bright as day at midnight. Typically you end up between a dozen or two fish per day. The other fish is not taking your fly or you miss them due to mistakes during the presentation resulting in bad contact or no contact to your fly or because you used light hook and fought the fish on the line, meaning not the soft brake of the reel or did not manage to use the flex of the rod to balance the anger of that grease finned friend.

I am not up there with my numbers. I can’t be bothered to stress about and search for very difficult fish and spots. I also get a huge gratification from seeing my clients catching, taking pictures and be a host. I love cooking and having the meals together. The local produce of moose and reindeer meat has a stunning quality. My personal gratification is to actually hook and Arctic char in a 20m plus cast in a dry-fly. It is priceless. Smaller fish but soooo beautiful. I almost cry every time I get one. Char fishing at night is very special as it tends to be good in very calm nights with the most amazing colours in the sky imaginable. It’s addictive. You gave to bring insect repellant though.

More information an booking via skalestrommen.no or just give me a call on +47 971 23 033, email: zullich@me.com