Some would categorize last summer as slow here in Iceland. I on the other hand would say it was great. Perhaps I did not catch the same amount as in the summer of 2013 or 2008 but fishing is always great, always. And there are always good memories to be shared.
And one of my most cherished memories from any fishing trip happened in the „slow „summer of 2014. My five year old son caught his first salmon, you can’t beat that.
It happened late in the autumn, the weather was terrible, the wind was blowing hard and the temperature was around the zero, turning the rain in to sleet. I would not have gone out if it would not be for a promise i made to my son. We were going fishing.
The weather was so bad that we only managed about 10 minutes fishing tops before we had to retreat to the car for some warmth. And the fishing was not great; in fact there was nothing, no movement in the first few places we tried. Zero degrees are not an optimum temperature for salmon fishing.
I admit it, I wanted to quit and retreat to a warm cup of coffee in the lodge. But my son on the other hand proved to be quite more resilient: “three more pools” he demanded from the back seat. Grudgingly I agreed.
In the first two spots there was nothing more than the cold sleet beating down on us. In the third and final pool according to our agreement it happened.
My son was casting on his own by now and I had turned my back on him when he yelled: „dad, its stuck again“. I went over and took over the rod. But wait a minute, after a few jigs the reel simply started screaming. It was certainly not stuck in the bottom and there was something big on the other end of the line.
I handed the rod to my son again and he wrestled with the salmon bravely it was not until the very end that i took over to land the fish. And what a start to the young man’s fishing career it was, a 90cm cock salmon! And all because of the young man’s resilience, he wanted to fish and he got his rewards and made his father very proud.
(As you can see on the picture above the young man is a bit scared of the large salmon. We were fishing for the hatchery so we could drop by the day after when the weather had cleared up to snap a picture of the proud fishermen.)