August 2000 - Svalbardsa

This was the first year we went to Svalbardsa. Vidar had fished in this river couple of times when he was young but he had not fished in it for over 20 years. He told me and Hilmar about this river and said it contained very large salmon so we asked Vidar to see if he could get us 3 days to try it out. Vidar arranged the river for the dates 22/8 - 25/8. The group that went this year: PE, Vidar, Hilmar and Gudmundur (my brother). Unfortunately then I do not have any photos from tihs trip but it turned out to be very interesting. We had no idea how to fish this river or where the best pools where. The river was very low in water this year but we did not know that as this was the first time we came there. The secound day we all walked on the mountain and split up so me and Hilmar planned to walk to the top (pool no. 1) and Vidar and Gudmundur went to Laxahylur (pool no. 10). Me and Gudmundur had stayed up very late and very pritty tired so I took a nap in a perfect spot witch is right above the pool - Vadid ofan og Nedan (pool no. 8) while Hilmar fished it. After sleeping for couple of hrs. then I woke up and Hilmar is long gone. I gear up and keep walking up the river until I get to Storifoss witch is pool no. 1. I take the fly rod and start casting out to the tail of the pool, after couple of cast’s I see the river basically rise where the water falls out of the pool and I see this huge salmon come after my fly as I am stripping in the fly. I freeze up and stop stripping when the fly is only about 3m away from me, so I get a very good look at the gigantic salmon as he looses interest and swims away. I am shaking as I have never seen so big salmon so I reel in the line and wade a shore and lit my pipe and continue to shake...

after taking a couple of deep breaths I take the worm rod I had with me and cast the worm out to the place where I had cast my fly earlier and as soon as the worm hits the water then the river rises again and a TAKE! The salmon takes couple of runs into the main pool but after awhile he moves down from the pool to a shallower water and sits down (what large salmons tend to do but I did not know that at the time...). After sitting there for about 10min. then I thought...well he must be getting tired so I start pulling on him and I get him to move closer to me so he is only about 3m. away from the shore, I then tighten the brake on the real as I thought this fight was over and I keep pulling him closer to me. When he is about 2m. from me he sees me and then he takes off!! I had 30pound line on there and since I had tighten the brake the rod bent all the way down to the river and then I could just feel the line stretch and then...SNAPP...and he was gone. The power this salmon had I will never forget but I would estimate it was around 20-25pounds. Couple of days later I was at the same pool and hooked another one in the same size range and had him hooked for almost 30min when he rolled over a couple of times and the hook came out. The experience I had this year in this river was so awesome that we have been going there ever since. In this trip the year 2000 I did get one Salmon on shore and that was approx. 4pound salmon caught in Laxahylur (no. 10). Vidar caught 2 brand new ones the last day in Svalbardselshylur and Gudmundur 1 in Laxahylur. We have since always taken 6 days in this river because we thought it was to far away from Reykjavik to go to for 3 days.