The federation of Icelandic river owners has just published its preliminary report about the catch in 2016. According to the report the catch was on the plus side of average. The total amount of caught fish is in the region of 40.000 which is 8% above average.

Catch in Iceland 1974-2016

Even so it was a strange year; we had an absolute bang in the beginning of season with all rivers full of MWS. Many rivers had record openings with numbers never seen before. We had a very warm spring and salmon entered the river systems much earlier than in a normal year, fresh salmon was reported in some rivers in the beginning of May which is two-three weeks early.

This good fishing continued until the middle of July but then it slowed down. That is due to the fact that that grilse runs were poor. If we would have had grilse runs above average we would be looking at a record year but that was not the case. Still we are relatively happy with the summer and especially how the MWS seem to be gaining ground again.

Next year we are predicting strong grilse run due to the fact that the spring was very good and conditions for the smolts were very favorable.

Get your rod ready for Iceland in 2017!

Tight lines

Johann David – jds@lax-a.is