So now I’m back from a two day fishing trip in the west of Iceland. Me and my buddies were fishing a small river called Stadara and our main target was sea char. We were a little bit early for the bigger char but nonetheless we had great success with the smaller ones. In two days the three of us caught about 80 sea char, one sea trout, three brown trout and six flat fish that I don’t know the English name for.
The fly that gave us the most fish was a fly called Bleik og bla (pink and blue). We also caught several char on shrimp patterns and some odd nymphs called Heimasaeta nymph, Peter Ross nymph and Hot chick. The basic colors seemed to be pink and orange and silver.
The method that worked the best was to keep moving the flies pretty fast and increasing the rate of retrieve. It even worked to move the nymphs very fast when casting upstream. So much for drag free drift.
The sea char are very very very fast swimmers and they will not give up their fight. I read once that the rainbow trout was the fastest swimmer. I can’t really tell since I have not caught a wild rainbow before (just stocked) but I bet the sea char is by far the fastest swimmer. Even a small fish of about a pound in weight can really give you a run for your money. And the way they take the fly is simply fantastic; I still have shaky hands from the excitement.
We had a sea char lunch during our trip and I also have to say that sea char is the best tasting fish I have ever had. We took some of the smallest fish for our lunch but released the rest. Overall we had a fantastic time during our trip and now we are looking forward to the grand opening of the fishing season in Grafara river, the sea char river we lease.
We at Iceland angling travel offer guided trips for sea char in three rivers in Iceland. See www.icelandangling.com for details.
Filed under: Arctic char, Fishing | Tagged: sea char
