I learnt to fish in Iceland, and ever since then it has held a special place in my heart. That trip was one of the most fortuitous experiences of my life. A man called Richard Needham called home and explained to my mother that the friend that was accompanying him to Iceland for a week’s salmon fishing had slipped a disk and was unable to go. Would my father and I like to share a rod? In a moment my mother had booked some last minute tickets and three days later we arrived in Iceland. During that week, at the age of fourteen and under the pupilage of fishing genius Haddi, I learnt to double haul, to cast with precision, to work a fly and ended up catching my first salmon.
Now, eight years more experienced, I was landing in Keflavik airport again for my second fishing trip to ‘the land of fire and ice’, this time with Euan. As you fly into Iceland it gives away a little glimpse of what to expect. Volcanoes rise out of flat land; plains are cracked yellow with sulphurous deposits, rivers run by giving off steam. Being students this was to be no lodge holiday, pumped full of delicious food and a chef willing to make your daily catch into vacuum-packed gravalax to take home. We were roughing it, which meant hiring the worst and smallest car you can imagine, packing it full of all the food you needed for a week with the vague hope that it wouldn’t go off, and camping out each night. Our aim for the week was to catch three species, dedicating two days to each.
Our first stop was at the river Galtalaekur to try and land a monster brown trout. Iceland is famous for having leviathan trout that have been hanging around unbothered since the last ice age. Certainly this river held a few of them. The river was perhaps only a mile or two long, but had only two pools worth fishing. The first was tiny; a small pot hole with a large waterfall cascading into it, and then a small waterfall flowing into the ground where the river disappeared for twenty feet or so. I have no idea how the trout got there but this particular pot was full. It looked a little bit like a gross kind of fish farm, and indeed some of the fish we caught from there had tails that had obviously been bitten at by larger fish that felt their territory was being impinged.
The second pool was where the river re-emerged again. This was called the stone arch pool. It was much longer and held many more fish. The water had such joyful clarity that you could see all the fish, and there must have been at least ten fish pushing 10lb or more, and then more and more trout moving down the scale, with perhaps the smallest being a pound and a half. This was the kind of pool that enticed us to Iceland.
And for almost two days we flogged it senseless with almost everything we had, and not a sniff from anything more than two pounds. In desperation fly-fisherman often put on the most absurd flies and this was no different. In a dark corner of my box of streamers I have a horrendous fly I bought in Montana as a joke. It is called the Sex Dungeon. It is an articulated fly, with two big hooks covered in elk hair, zonker strips, and two big yellow eyes. The eyes act as weights and the elk hair as a float. This means that as you strip it in it moves up and down in the water. Being articulated adds extra movement – a sort of hip wiggle that you might expect from a Soho stripper. If the micro-nymphs weren’t going to raise a trouty eyebrow then surely this would. Within moments I had every fish in the pool chasing my fly. I have never been more excited. One small one even opened its mouth but couldn’t fit the Sex Dungeon in, such is the monstrosity of this fly. However, none of the larger fish made the final commitment to munch their way into my fly, turning up their noses at the last stage of inspection. Eventually they became quite nonchalantly bored of this. When Euan came over we had a conference of defeat. There was nothing for it except some serious foul play. One trout, at least ten pounds but almost certainly more, was lying in the shallows. I cast my Sex Dungeon out and let it sink. Slowly I dragged it closer. Closer to the flank of this huge fish. Strike! And the hook was embedded in its side. In a moment though my line went slack and I retrieved my line to realize that this new leader of seven pound breaking strain had been broken.
I camped with a heavy heart that night on the shores of Lake Langarvatn, knowing that we had succeeded in catching a brown trout, but that the monster fish, even if captured in a most unsporting manner had evaded us.
Eating our breakfast of skyr (Icelandic strained yogurt) and honey we surveyed to lake, and it’s outlet into the River Holaa where many arctic char – our second target species – were rumored to live. There was one solitary figure fishing the outlet. While Euan caught up with a bit more sleep I strolled over to ask his advice. When I was about twenty yards away he looked up from the water, he had distinguished grey hair hiding beneath a ripped and bedraggled hat, and a tanned face with lines of knowledge, he was perhaps seventy years old. Before I could even say hello he opened, “how did you sleep Sam?” Taken aback that he knew who I was, and a little embarrassed that I had slept in, I sputtered my way into the next sentence. It turned out that this was Mohammed, a guide for the man who organised our fishing. He had been told to look out for us.
Mohammed was one of the rarest characters I am ever likely to meet. Fleeing national service in Egypt he immigrated to Iceland. Once settled there he became involved in left-wing politics before finally finding his vocation as a fly-fishing guide. With the knowledge that he was a guide, and also knowing that he had caught twelve char already that morning and I had caught none I thought it might be a good idea to befriend him. He, also wanting to befriend an Englishman, and hearing that Euan had fishing in Scotland was very keen to accept my advances. Before long I had landed my first char. That day we lit a disposable barbeque and grilled some with him.
Mohammed came back to the lake the next day with two clients. He spent more time talking to us that looking after them. We felt mildly guilty but not enough to do anything about it. While hauling in the smallish char we told him of our plan to go tomorrow to the Snaefellus peninsula and fish a collection of lakes and rivers known as the Lysa lakes. At this he protested and insisted that we go with him somewhere else. He was equally adamant that we didn’t tell his boss whom we had organised Lysa through. We agreed, principally because it offered us a chance at another fish, the sea-run arctic char, and also because Mohammed said we could sleep at his place that night. I was desperate not to camp.
The romance of camping had now totally left me. I was pining for a shower, a cocktail, sleep – almost anything that didn’t involve a tent. That night we went to a restaurant for dinner and having had nothing resembling good food for four days I immediately ordered ‘The Lobster Feast’, four courses of lobster joy. I enjoyed shaving, and I had a shower so hot I thought it might burn me. We got up at 4 am the next morning to start a drive to the impossible pronounced Hraunfjordurvatn.
The journey was bizarre. We had to take a detour to say hello to Mohammed’s daughter who was catching a ferry from somewhere along our root. Our cars said crossed roots at a shut petrol station. Mohammed and his daughter talked for less than a minute and we were on our way again. We drove past a solidified lava flow, now known as the Berserker lava field because it had come from the still active Berserker volcano. Shortly after this we came across some grazing sheep. One was on the road. Without so much of a flicker from the brake light Mohammed ploughed down one of the sheep, killing it instantly. He didn’t stop. Just kept going straight, if anything a little faster as if a guilty man fleeing a crime scene. When we arrived at the lake he straightened his bent number plate and we didn’t mention it again.
A small trek from the car brought us to a marvelous and wild lake. And fish were rising everywhere. We assembled our rods as quickly as we could and were soon into fish. These fish were by far the best fighting freshwater fish I had ever come across, and very beautiful too with their vermillion bellies and metal grey flanks. The fish we caught were mainly small but gave a stunning account of themselves. The three of us stood contentedly in a line looking across the lake and casting to rising fish with little red and black flies. At one end of the lake Mohammed pointed to the Berserker lava flow coming into the lake, forming sheer cliffs of fifteen to twenty feet high. After lunch I trekked over there alone. From the top of the cliffs you could see the char cruising around the shallows. It reminded me of bonefishing. I cast to one fish from up above, and seeing it motor toward my fly and engulf it I set the hook. It was off to the horizon. I was instantly into my backing. After a wonderful battle I pulled the fish onto the bank. Looking splendid in the sun I was surprised to see that it was only two pounds. Content I made my next cast to another cruising fish and the whole wonderful saga began again, my reel screaming with pain, me breathless with excitement. It was one of my most wonderful memories in all my fly-fishing life. That evening Euan and I drove to our next destination content with one of the best day’s fishing ever under our belt.
Iceland is justly famous for its salmon fishing. And finally, in the last two days of our trip, we were to target this most majestic of creatures. We were to try two different rivers, and first up was the renowned Hitara. However, our hopes were dashed as soon as we arrived at the self-catering lodge. Firstly the man who we were sharing the river with was there. And he had a car that had a wing mirror that was higher than our entire vehicle. It was clear this was 4x4 terrain and little more would do. Second, we looked in the logbook. Unbeknownst to us the season had only opened on this river two days previously and they were yet to catch a fish. Although it was 2am Euan and I decided to do a reconnoiter of the river to see if we could even get to it in our car. Progress was not good. All along the track Euan had to go ahead and clear away any rocks that were bigger than a fist so we didn’t bottom out. When we finally did reach the river it looked quite nice, but it was also clear that of the various tracks to different beats we could only take this particular track…
The Hitara is a wonderfully clear salmon river. We fished a few spots that we were able to reach, and spied out others. Seeing no salmon we called it a day and decided to tour a bit of Iceland. Slowly, slowly our car crawled back down the track, Euan going ahead and clearing small rocks out of the way. Finally we were on the open road again. We visited Pingvalleur: the continental divide between Europe and North America. It is a huge rock crevice that is ripping Iceland, bit by bit, in two. From there we saw some geysers. Next we set off for Gulfoss, one of the largest waterfalls in Europe. We looked at the map and there seemed a reasonable road. We were wrong. Icelandic road maps show no discretion between dual carriageways and dirt tracks. This was a dirt track. Two hours later of what was meant to be a forty-five minute journey and we were still plodding our way on. The track was black and the landscape was black. It was all volcanic rock, and every now and then we would pass a hot spring or bubbling puddle of mud, somewhere in the region of 200 to 1000 degrees centigrade. You always smelled the stench of sulphur before you saw it. Eventually this landscape vanished and grass began to appear again and with it we came to Gulfoss. It really is monumental. The power of water at such a great width surging over a serious of huge and vertical cliffs into a deep canyon you can’t see the bottom of. From a hundred metres away we were drenched by the spray.
Thoroughly contented that we had seen a bit of Iceland we made our way to the final river of our trip; a petite river made up of waterfalls and small pools not a hundred kilometers from Reykjavik. On our way the familiar green landscape we had welcomed earlier was no full of columns of smoke, with one central column bigger than all the rest. We were watching a volcano erupt. This was apparently no problem. Something that happened weekly in Iceland. Just another part of the utterly extreme environment that Icelanders lived in.
Our final river was a joy; the kind of salmon river we had hoped Iceland would give us. Near the bottom of the river there is a large waterfall that opens into a big circular pool. From a large boulder you can cast to fish you have spotted. I watched as a perfect grilse opened it’s mouth and snatched my Red Frances on my fifth cast of the morning. The water was so crystal that I saw the fishes every detail – the lines in its mouth, the pattern of its scale’s and the first shake of its head as it began to try and rid itself of the hook. That day we feasted for lunch and supper. It was accompanied by the finest Islay malt, a 22 year old Bunnahabin, that Euan had bought with him, and some roasted marshmallows. We laughed at points and at other times ate content knowing that we were in an absurd place. As we had been fishing for salmon that day there had been a small earthquake. That too is part of the Icelanders daily routine. It was 2am by now and we had a flight to catch in a few hours, yet it was still light enough to spot the salmon in that pool, jostling for position and waiting to run up river. We knew that the sun wasn’t likely to set until September.
