Viking Lars | Saturday, 22 April 2017
In the last decade, some rivers have produced really magnificent salmon over 20kg, and I think the biggest from 2016 just pushed the 18kg mark on the scales. These salmon are truely impressive and massive, strong bars of chrome and silver. - hardly a visible scale on them.
Last year, the most northern river, Storaa, has had the strongest opening with lots of really big salmon. Skjern and Varde has had slower openings, but Skjern tends to follow on a little later, whiile Varde sometimes, last year for instance, fished really well in late summer and fall as the grilse really began to run.
The same has been the case this year. Storaa, at the time of writing, has delivered 118 salmon (average weight of app. 8,5kg), Skjern has delivered 103 and Varde 76. Very strong openings for all three rivers, which are the most important salmon rivers in Denmark. In fact, I'll hazard a guess and say that the opening week in Denmark is Europe's best choice for a +10kg salmon!
I didn't attend the opening days because of Easter and had my forst outing (for salmon) on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday. I didn't get one (yet), but then again, I haven't really put in the hours yet. There may be lots of salmon, but it's still not easy to get one.
The Swedish fly, "The Banana" - by Mikael Anderson, has been really popular over the last years in Denmark and I've added it to my boxes for the first time this year. I've also added some tube versions of "The Iceman". Those two, and my trusty "Black & Silver" (which has very little silver left in it) will see my through the season - although more will be added as the changing conditions inspire and call for new and/or other flies.
I want to catch a spring salmon this year, and once that's achieved, I have a new fishery to explore: Big lakes with trout in them. It's on right now where the sticklebacks ball up over deeper water and slowly, during the next month or so, disperse in over more and more shallow water, and I'd really love to try and catch a truely wild, Danish trout from a lake. So. I'll be tying some sticklebacks soon (slightly weighted I think), and I'll probably tie them as "STF Fish", a wonderful small fish imitation by my friend, Morten Valeur (I did a video a while back for a Danish magazine, which you can see here.
Have a great weekend!
Lars
The PoD shows my "Iceman" tube version and a custom order of white-over-black Sunray Shadows.