We are pleased with the start of the season on most fronts and as a whole the salmon season in Iceland has had a lively start with salmon turning up early on many rivers. In some places there are reasonable numbers of mws‘s and the grilse runs have been strong over the past week or two. Many rivers are reaching their climax these days while others, among them all of our salmon rivers, are later starters and hold up better deep into the season.

Yesterday evening Breiðdalsá had nearly 150 salmon recorded in the catch book in the Eyjar lodge. The average weight is just over 4 kilos and would be higher if not for several very small grilse. But overall the fish are big and in great condition and we have had a lot of big fish drama. One 24 pound hen fish died in our hands as we tried to get her to the hatchery. Two days later another two fish just as big was landed and released while our river keeper Súddi spotted yet another one in Bryggjuhylur on Tinna and a long line cod fisherman in the bay to his surprise pulled out another one, a hen fish exceeding 20 pounds. It is remarkable that all these huge salmon are female.

The norm in Iceland is that four out of five fish of this size are male. We are obviously excited to see if this big fish trend continues, as last season, at about the same time of the summer, we had these monsters landed day after day for quite a while, fish ranging to 25 pounds!

Our Jökla project has started better than ever. We formally open it at the start of July but the area is yet to develop so the early days have up until now not been greatly sought after. Last season the first salmon was caught on July the 14th. On that same day this year eight had been landed and a few others had broken off! Plus, the few anglers that have had a look have seen several salmon in several areas and numbers are on the way up. This is great news for us. Last year we almost finished with two hundred salmon. Judging by this prolific start we could oversee a vast improvement this year. We are still saying: Jökla is really something to have a good hard look at. This is like the early days on Breiddalsa and now is the time to stake a claim and experience the thrill of watching a new brilliant salmon fishery of great potential grow by the year.

Hruta has had a fine start, but first we had draughts and low water, then last days it has improved well and good number of fish are now in some of the pools in the river.

As is Laxa in Nesjum. Quite contrary to the last 2-3 seasons, Laxa now has excellent water levels and despite it being a late season river, the first salmon have been caught and quite a few are running. So this excellent little river is off to a bright start.

On the trout front, Minnivallalaekur is much better this year than the last 2-3 years despite the slow start due to the cold spring we had. There are more super sized browns as well. We have, at this moment in time, over 250 landed and recorded brown trout and foreign guests fishing in the heat wave in the south of Iceland over the past several days have had excellent results using the smallest of dry flies.