Icing on the Cake

The streams and rivers of Iceland explode with freshwater and sea-run salmon, char and trout. To the purist who’s an angler of the long rod in pursuit of the often-elusive Atlantic salmon, the magnificent rivers of Iceland hold an allure akin to, say, the shrine at Lourdes, both cherished by their respective acolytes for the healing properties of their waters.

Each season, with the same religious regularity that characterizes the salmon’s fabled return from the ocean to spawn in the crystalline rivers of their birth, anglers anxiously retrace their steps to the rock-strewn, gravel-lined banks to pursue them.

Although unable to visit these wondrous rivers on an annual basis, I’ve nonetheless been lucky enough to do so three times in the last 15 years, most recently this past summer. In each instance the Nordic experience worked wonders in helping me get ready for an ensuing New York winter.

Flies and fads

Gudni Ólafsson, the pastor of the local Lutheran congregation, served as my guide when fishing the Midfjardará. I found him to be a gracious, soft-spoken, wonderfully contemplative man. Shortly after I began casting the first morning of my stay, I took a small salmon, a grilse of about five pounds, at Junction Pool, one of 200 named pools on a river that boasts an astonishing 50 miles of fishable water.

The fish rose to a yellow streamer, and thereafter I took fish on a No. 8 Black Sheep, a No. 6 Collie Dog and later on a No. 6 Red Francis which, along with the more traditional Blue Charm and the Laxá Blá, is perhaps Iceland’s most popular fly.

Before you start tying or buying flies for a trip to Iceland, let me offer a note of caution: Fads affect salmon flies as much as they do fashion. Initially, anglers relied almost exclusively on the large traditional Scottish patterns like the Jock Scott and Green Highlander made with feathers of exotic birds. Then came hair-wings (using elk, dog, squirrel, even monkey hair), and flies sparsely tied, microscopic, tube, riffle-hitched and on and on.

The latest entry in this parade of patterns is the Sunray Shadow, a large black hair-wing tied on a plastic tube without any dressing on the body. First meant for use on a river in Norway, it’s by no means of recent vintage, but Icelanders seem only recently to have discovered its effectiveness, saying it frequently attracts extremely aggressive strikes when stripped quickly across the surface.

Salmon rods, too, require a note of caution. In contrast to European anglers, Americans have been led to believe that no matter how wide the river or broad the pool, unless they use a single-handed rod to fish for salmon they’re ill-advised and over-equipped. After years of wasting valuable time and effort hauling, double-hauling, water-hauling, whatever, I simply don’t buy that dogma any more.

I learned Spey casting and started using a willow-light 14-foot Sage 10 years ago on the Vatnsdalsá – the first river in Iceland to institute a policy of only catch-and-release fishing.

This ethic increasingly, albeit begrudgingly, has been gaining acceptance among Icelandic anglers. In any event, I’ve been a convert to two-handed rods ever since. Simply put, you can cover a lot more water with far less exertion, and when you need to mend a substantial length of line, it really mends. Equally important, when you’re using sinking line, there’s no struggle involved; you simply slice it back to the surface with one effortless lift of the rod.

Salmon-Seeking Celebrities

Roughly the size of Pennsylvania and supporting a population of only 311,000 inhabitants, Iceland boasts some 87 fishable rivers. I’ve wet my waders (from the outside, that is) in only a small fraction of these – the Midfjardará, Laxá i Dölum, Vídidalsá, Vatnsdalsá, Grímsá, Nordurá, and Fljótaá. Even so, my experiences include taking salmon and Arctic char in unimaginable numbers, and the rich and famous know all about it too.

Jack Nicklaus clearly treasures the place. He’s fished the Fljótaá and the even more pricey Laxá i Adaldal, famously productive of big fish and thus colloquially known as the Big Laxá. So do celebs such as Kevin Costner, Cameron Diaz, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ted Turner and Perry Bass, the Texas oil multi-billionaire.

Now 92, Bass has for years been a major contributor to the North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NASF), the conservation organization whose visionary chairman, Orri Vigfússon, in his effort to save the species from extinction, conceived and carried out the ingenious scheme of buying out the netting rights of commercial fishermen. First he did so in Greenland and then elsewhere throughout the Atlantic salmon’s range while promoting viable economic alternatives in their stead.

Prince Charles generally prefers two of Iceland’s most productive rivers, the Hofsá and the Selá, while Eric Clapton favors the Laxá i Asum to the extent that this past summer he reportedly paid $100,000 to fish it, staying not in the self-catering cabin serving the river but in a deluxe hotel suite in the nearby town of Blonduos. Buying for six prime-time days in mid-July and for both of the two rods that the Laxá i Asum allows, he arrived only for the latter three days so as to give the river a rest from being fished the week before.

Foreign Invaders

Native Icelanders have been fishing the seas filled with herring, haddock and halibut and the rivers into which they flow since their Viking ancestors first settled the island in the 9th century. Even so, it took 1,000 more years before outsiders got up the gumption to do so.

The first foreign angler to arrive in Iceland was an intrepid Englishman named Charles Ackroyd, who traveled to Reykjavik by ship in the summer of 1877, accompanied by two fishing companions, three servants and a cook.

With no roads at the time, the party traveled cross-country on horseback up the rugged west coast. Even being mid-July, drift-ice still floated offshore and freezing winds howled out of the north, pelting their campsite with constant sleet and rain. The trip, as one Icelandic fishing historian described it, entailed a blend of ordeal, insanity and – since the party caught enormous numbers of big salmon and Arctic char – a tremendously thrilling experience to be sure.

As the logistics of travel in Iceland improved, anglers from abroad flocked to the country in Ackroyd’s pioneering footsteps. First came the gentry of the British Empire, the clubby aristocratic set, but in the years following World War II, American fly fishing aficionados also discovered the place, among them Benny Goodman and Bing Crosby. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, both groups valued the Atlantic salmon far more than the Arctic char.

To accommodate these visitors, self-catering huts as well as many full-service lodges sprang up. Though mostly rustic rather than luxurious, they boasted fine chefs and an array of highly cultured, marvelously multi-lingual gillies (guides). Each winter, the gillies returned to their towns to resume normal careers as businessmen, orchestral conductors, schoolteachers and the like.

As a result, the main ordeal for the visiting angler nowadays is less in finding comfortable quarters than in figuring the wherewithal to pay for them. Or to be more specific, to pay for the privilege of fishing any given stream on any given day, since (as a vestige of feudalism) all fishing rights to every stream – indeed, to virtually every body of water in Iceland – inhere to its riparian owners. Most of these land-rich sheep farmers lease their rights and entrust their management to any of several Icelandic sport-fishing outfitters who service them. As a result, the price of a beat on some Icelandic rivers has tripled in the last decade alone.

Sometimes Huge, Always Plentiful

None of the salmon I’ve taken (or lost) in Iceland has been humongous, though on the Laxá i Dölum I did miss a very large fish only because a smaller one raced past and beat it to the fly. Still, whether hooked in the strong current of a pool running through a steep, lichen-covered canyon or in a quiet, deep pool bordered by meadows lush with lupine, Iceland poppy, and cottongrass perfumed with the aromatic scent of wild thyme, each and every one of them has put up a great fight. It certainly confirms A.J. McClane’s observation that what an Icelandic salmon “... may lack in size, it more than makes up in vigor.”

These salmon leap wildly at the end of reel-screeching runs and bulldog upstream to sulk behind rocks. They seem to defy attempts at dislodging them by exerting more pressure on your undoubtedly already-frayed tippet. In one instance where a fish took the fly practically at my feet, it skittered 60 yards full steam across the surface of the water to the other bank, then instantly reversed course and steamed straight back to spit the hook out virtually in my face.

Some salmon have been known to pull an angler upwards of 1,000 ankle-jarring yards along a river bank before finally being brought to net or breaking off. So far I’ve been spared that degree of humiliation, and fortunately I’ve also managed to expurgate from the record all photos of me stumbling over river boulders on shorter chases. In my dreams I still interpret the high-pitched tittering call of the ubiquitous streamside whimbrel as a mocking commentary on my ungainly antics in pursuit of these fish.

Twelve of us congregated at the Midfjardará Lodge on my last visit, each on a shared rod basis to keep individual costs down. In those three days the six rods took 62 salmon, the largest a 16-pound silver beauty freshly arrived from the sea. That’s pretty good fishing, but certainly not the best Iceland can offer. The unofficial record on the Nodurá came to bear some years ago by Steinar Kristiánsson, a renowned Icelandic taxidermist who, with his 15-year-old son Kristián (himself an expert fly-caster and fly-tier), guided me this past summer on the Arctic char pool of the Fljótaá.

“It was late August, and the weather suddenly turned so cold – in fact, it started snowing – that the other rods slept in,” Steinar told me over a dinner of boiled potatoes and herring at the Fljótaá’s self-catering cabin.

“My friend and I were the only two anglers to brave the elements that morning, and what a morning it was. Between the two of us we took 50 Arctic char up to 12 pounds and 32 salmon up to 17 pounds.”

Indeed, in recent years Iceland has seen a resurgence of larger fish with salmon upwards of 25 pounds, including one mean-looking specimen of 31 pounds taken in the summer of 2006.

Yet the numbers and size only tell part of the story. As Arni Baldersson, director of the Lax-á Angling Club, likes to put it, “Every fish is a triumph.”

For me that’s true whether the fish be a salmon or an Arctic char, and many Icelanders would agree, including Sigurdur “Sigie” Karlsson, a distinguished retired banker still active as one of the most sought-after guides on the Vídidalsá.

“Sure, the salmon swims more, and jumps,” he said, pointing me to the head of Hamars Pool, recognized as the best sea-run Arctic char water in the country. “But the char is far more powerful and heavy on the hook.” He might also have added that it’s a better-tasting fish as well.

My most successful char fishing, as it turned out, did not occur on the Vídidalsá that day, but on a little glacier-fed stream in the Arnavatn Highlands, an exhilarating two-hour, 4-wheel-drive expedition into the lava-encrusted (and sometimes midge-ridden) marshes of the interior.

There, for the entire afternoon, using dry flies and wets, nymphs and streamers, my Icelandic companions and I hooked into fish – orange-bellied beauties all – on virtually every cast. Still, in the company of such good people, and in the presence of such awesome landscapes, the fish themselves just represented the perfect icing on the cake.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and former Chinese interpreter for the U.S.Department of State, then China specialist for the Ford Foundation, Dave Finkelstein is a New York-based freelance writer whose articles have appeared in many publications. A flamenco guitarist and holder of an 8th degree in Okinawan karate, he authored the recently republished Greater Nowheres: Wanderings Across the Outback.

Where To Toss The Bags

Getting to Iceland is a relative breeze, since Icelandair flies there from several east coast US cities in less than five hours. Keep in mind that Customs regulations in Iceland require that you show a notarized certificate from a veterinary clinic confirming that your rods, waders and other fishing equipment have been properly disinfected. Otherwise they’ll charge you about $30 per rod to do it at the airport.

If it’s salmon you’re after and want to keep costs down, book dates at the beginning of the season in June or late August through (in some rivers) September 20 so as to avoid the prime-time month of July. The same applies if your preference is for Arctic char or trout. Iceland also boasts an abundance of huge double-digit wild brown trout for which you can fish through October. Sea-run brown trout appear as early as April.

Char and trout abound in Iceland’s lakes as well as in its rivers, and for about $75 you can buy online a Veidikortid, which is a license valid for the entire season allowing access to about 30 lakes around the country.

Hire (at about $500 a day) an authorized Icelandic guide to ensure maximizing your catch ratio as well as enhancing your overall experience. The guide will provide a pick-up at the airport, transportation to rivers or lakes and advise you on the best fishing techniques. Needless to say, self-catering huts are far more economical than full-service lodges but lack the same number of amenities.

For fishing arrangements and guides, contact Arni Baldursson (arnibald@lax-a.is), Bjarni Júlíusson (bjarni@framnes.is), Orri Vigfússon (orri@icy.is) for fishing on the Fljótaá River or Orri’s son Vigfús Orrason (vivvi@icy.is) for not only fishing but also bird-shooting.

Bring Your Camera

Although you can set up a personal itinerary, bus tours out of Reykjavik offer a more reasonable alternative to savoring the sights of this remarkable country. From a scenic point of view, I’d recommend a trip to Guilfoss, a thundering two-tiered cataract not far from Reykjavik and considered to be the most spectacular waterfall in Iceland.

Go as well to Hraunfossar Falls, whose upstream course lies hidden beneath a vast volcanic plain of porous rock until it suddenly cascades out from under the lava to plummet into the gorge below.

Impressive as well is the geyser adjacent to the now dormant Geysir, in its heyday the largest in the world, whose name has become the universal generic for this awesome phenomenon of nature.

Another must-visit involves Thingvellir National Park, site of Europe’s oldest parliament that first convened in 930 AD. The park sits astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and you actually can cross the scar-like fissure where the African and American tectonic plates are in the process of being torn apart as lava rises from the earth to fill the gap.

As for museums, I particularly enjoyed the Icelandic Seal Center in Hvammstangi, a town at the mouth of the Midfjardará River, and the Herring Museum in Siglufjördur, a fishing village near the Fljótáa River.

A travel agency specializing in Iceland tourism is LT Travel (www.LTtravel.com) or visit Iceland’s official tourism site (www.icetourist.is/).

Other Notes of Interest

About Iceland

• Official Name: Republic of Iceland
• Area: 103,000 square kilometers or 39,770 square miles
• Capital: Reykjavic
• Government: A constitutional republic
• Population: 311,396
• Religion: Most are members of the National Church of Iceland
• Language: Icelandic
• Currency: Icelandic kroner ($1US = 61.87ISK)