| Iceland Salmon Fishing |
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Page 1 of 3 If fly-fishing is the highest form of the sport, and if salmon are the most prized quarry, then Iceland must be heaven on earth 
In 1936, an Icelandic schoolmaster named Halldor hooked a huge Atlantic salmon in that country’s Grimsa River. After an epic battle, he had just managed to steer the fish into shallow water when the hook pulled out of its mouth. The schoolmaster dropped his rod, threw his person onto the salmon, and thrashed around trying to grasp it. The hard, bright body of an Atlantic salmon being slicker than snot on a doorknob, this proved impossible. So, with his trophy about to escape, he bit down on its tail and dragged it onto the bank with his teeth, thus exemplifying for the ages the passion, commitment, and questionable intelligence common to all dedicated Atlantic salmon fishermen.
Roughly the size of Kentucky, that astonishingly beautiful little island nation has nearly 100 rivers to which salmon return annually. Cooperatives of local landowners own the salmon-fishing rights to those rivers and lease them out to be sold as rod days to roughly 3,000 anglers each year. During the prime months of July and August, a day of fishing on the best rivers—not counting accommodations, food, and a guide—costs between $1,000 and $4,000 per rod, which puts it among the priciest salmon fishing on earth. Until recently, it looked as if it might also be some of the last.
 ACCESS Iceland air offers excellent nonstop service from Boston, New York (JFK), Orlando Sanford, and Minneapolis/St. Paul to Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavík (Read more...
The credit for this remarkable turnaround belongs to no one more than Orri Vigfússon, a diminutive Icelander of terrier tenacity and combativeness who founded the North Atlantic Salmon Fund in 1989. A knight by the Queen of Denmark, holder of a business degree from the London School of Economics, and owner of a premier vodka company, Orri has been a tireless hellion of a salmon saver for two decades. Raising tens of millions of dollars and preserving an estimated five million salmon through buyout compliances in Greenland, Ireland, Wales, and Norway, he has, like a modern Halldor, dragged the fish away from permanent loss in his square Viking jaws. Orri is known throughout Europe as Mr. Atlantic Salmon, and when he invited photographer Tom Montgomery and me to add two of his pet rivers to a fishing itinerary we were planning for this past summer, we leaped like salmon at the chance. |
What manner of fish could inspire a story still being told after more than 70 years—let alone be worth Halldor’s dental bill? Well, it is a marvelous-looking silver bullet of a thing, ranging in size between five and 50 pounds, that when hooked can become a whizzing, leaping frenzy of self-preservation capable of summoning coronaries. Prized by fanatical anglers for this vivid disinclination to be caught above all game fish, Atlantic salmon return each spring from the sea to the North American and European rivers of their birth. For those seeking to catch them on fly rods, the most productive of those rivers are in Canada, Scotland, Norway, Russia, and Iceland. And there’s no better place to do so than in Iceland.| Next > |
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