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Iceland

Our March 2001 contribution from Jon Beer

It is much that same as before but the smell is different. Foot and Mouth, that is. I was around for the last lot in 1967. I remember the little red notices tied to gates and the general air of Something Going On that gripped the country. But most of all I remember the smell. The disinfectant, that is. It smelt like proper disinfectant in those days, like something your mother would scrub the floor with after the dog was sick. It was brown but it went white when poured into water – like Pernod. And it smelt strong. When you dipped your shoes in the stuff you expected the soles to come out melted and smoking. I don’t doubt that the disinfectant at the farm gate at the end of my garden kills all known germs but it doesn’t quite have the nasal clout of the old stuff.

I mention this because not long ago I was in search of some of this super smelly disinfectant with which to go fishing.

I was off to Iceland.

It began in the 60’s when UDN, a fungal disease of trout and salmon, was ravaging the rivers of Europe. Anyone who stood beside a salmon pool and watched the ghostly, ghastly, pale shapes of salmon encrusted with the deadly fungus does not forget the sadness of the sight. The fishermen of Iceland had, and have, some of the best-regulated - and most valuable - salmon fishing in the world. They didn’t fancy seeing it all washing down the river covered in fungus. They began a successful siege that has lasted to this day. All fishing tackle - rods, reels, lines, waders, flies, net – anything that gets wet must be disinfected as you enter Iceland. It can be done at the airport when you arrive but that can take ages and is not cheap. Or it can be done before you leave home. This must be done by a vet who will draw up an inventory of disinfected items. This is also not cheap (for more details visit http://www.lax-a.is/disinfection.asp). The Icelandic officials take disinfectant very, very seriously so I wanted to demonstrate convincingly that I had done all I should. I had my certificates. I also had the smelliest disinfectant I could find and drenched everything in it. I smelled like an infant classroom after a mild food-poisoning incident.

We were there, I suppose, after salmon but this is not about salmon. It is the Tale of Two Trout. Salmon fishing in Iceland is splendid and expensive. The two trout were not expensive. One trout was pretty cheap by Icelandic standards because it was in water where no salmon swims. People who fish in water where no salmon swims are regarded in Iceland like folk who drink their own urine: nothing you would want to do yourself but relatively harmless as long as they don’t do it near decent folk.

The other trout was priceless. Literally. We will start with that one.

A small, humdrum stream flows through the suburbs of Reykjavik. The Ellidaá is a short river of some 3 Km winding through the capital, never more than a few yards across. It is the home water of the Reykjavik club and they are very proud of it: they are entitled to be. There are few enough capital cities that can boast an unpolluted stream - and this one has 18,000 salmon pass through its fish-counter every year. The club owns many waters across the island and all are available to visitors once the members have booked their season's fishing - except the Ellidaá. It is kept for members only and who can blame them. Not me, because for one magical afternoon I got to fish it as a guest. We fished tiny trebles behind quarter-of-an-inch long tube flies, casting them into the runs and pools as you might for small brown trout. But what take these tiny flies are fresh-run salmon. It was staggering and fun and not at all like salmon fishing as we know it, Jim, but more like brook fishing for very, very big trout in a little trout stream. We had taken five of these beautiful fish and were resting when I asked our host whether the stream held trout.

It does - but who would bother to fish for them with 18,000 salmon sharing the water? Good point. But that evening he took us to the top of the river where it begins its short descent to the sea from Ellidavatn, a small lake on the outskirts of Reykjavik. We stopped at a wooden bridge: beneath us the water was stately and serene and we could see several salmon holding station in the current. One detached itself and rose to pluck something from beneath the surface. Its back was unmistakably speckled and beautifully brown-trouty. Peter put on a small goldhead pheasant-tail nymph and cast it way upstream of the large fish. Once, twice it passed down unmolested and then, on the third pass, it disappeared. Into the large trout. A second later the large trout had disappeared, barrelling beneath the bridge and into a long series of rocky rapids that plunged down the hillside. And Peter followed, sploshing beneath the small bridge and careering down the tumbled rocks beside the river. The rapids ended in a deep pool and there the trout was subdued, netted and admired. A magnificent beast, browner and more speckled that any trout I had ever seen: and heavy - with just a touch of the tench in its heredity.

The second trout occurred in the middle of Iceland. Maps of this country are optimistic. They show an impressive red highway following the coast around the island with a network of roads spreading out into the interior. Do not take these roads too seriously. They are gravel tracks. We had just passed the impressive bulk of Mount Hekla, the volcano which erupted spectacularly in 1947. We were driving though a landscape that was bizarre even in this land of weird and wonderful terrain. We found ourselves driving over sand dunes, long rolling waves of black volcanic sand that stretched to a black horizon against a sky that glowed pink in a long sunset that slides seamlessly into sunrise in these latitudes. It was like The Road to Morocco shot in negative. It was a strange place to find brown trout.

But they are there. Viedivötn is an outlandish graveyard of volcanic craters, hidden in a vast and forbidding desert of black sand just to the west of Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe. When the first fishermen trekked in on horseback just a few decades ago they came out with incredible stories of huge brown trout hurling themselves recklessly onto any lure. Now this is just the sort of story that fishermen liked in those days. And, to tell the truth, they still do. The lakes are more accessible in these days of high-ride four-wheel drives but it is still not a trip for those of a nervous disposition. As we rounded a bend the track plunged into a fair old river sweeping across the gravel. So did we. When we hit the water a solid wave swept over the bonnet and up the windscreen while the headlights shone through our bow wave.

The fishing camp at Veidivötn is an oasis of life in the midst of a moonscape. The pattern of lakes stretches for 20 kilometres, connected by switchback tracks across the dusty dunes. Some lakes are open bowls with low shores like a southern reservoir transported to Mars. Others are steep-sided, intimate pools with reed-fringed shallows dropping suddenly into icy blue-green depths. There were no rules when these craters exploded into their present form. A bitter wind had sprung up from the south by the time we had rested through the remainder of what serves for a night in these parts. We trekked across springy moss to a small crater separated from a larger lake by a narrow bar. A fish rose splashily in the short waves beneath a pinnacle of rotted lava. It is not obvious what fly to use when one is fishing on the moon but hare's ear is probably as attractive to trout there as it is elsewhere in the cosmos so I stuck on a gold-head hare's ear nymph and cast out into the unknown. A minute or so later the rod was bending down towards the surface in the satisfactory manner of big trout anywhere in the cosmos.

P.S.

The little river Ellidaá below Ellidavatn is not open to visitors at any price. But above the lake, beyond the reach of salmon, it is available for a few pounds a day.

The lake fishing at Viedivötn costs around £25 per day. The accommodation is comfortable if rudimentary and costs around £10 per person.

Trout fishing is often available and remarkably cheap when staying on farms with accommodation – provided they don’t have salmon. Icelandic Farm Holidays publish an excellent fishing guide with all the details.

Jon Beer contributes regularly to publications including Trout & Salmon and The Telegraph. If you have any comments, do not hesitate to get in touch or use the message board.