Fly Fishing in the Norwegian Fjords

Fly Fishing in the Norwegian Fjords

Bernd Ziesche | Wednesday, 1 July 2015

Fly fishing in the Norwegian Fjords isn’t much popular yet! Why? Actually I haven’t got a clue. The Norwegian Fjords simply offer fly fishing at its best!

23 years ago after having successfully passed my drivers license I directly drove up to the Norwegian island Hitra to fly fish for pollack, coal fish, cod, makrel, Sea trout, Atlantic salmon and more! There were and still are a lot of different species of fish to be caught throughout the fjords. It’s possible to aim for small, medium and even serious large fish. A perfect field for beginners and advanced to improve fish fighting and handling skills. Usually one catches a lot of fish during an average day. Thus one rapidly gains a lot of experience in fly fishing.

During the past week Marina, Kurt, Tristan, Dieter, Frank and I spent some more outstanding days fly fishing the famous Glomma river in Norway. Everyone caught a lot of fish (grayling, Brown trout and pike). Simply a fantastic trip for everyone! Besides teaching fly fishing and fly casting to the group Marina and I got the fine opportunity to be guided half a day by our mate Hein van Aar. Hein works as the (Glomma) river keeper for the Fly Fishing zone along the Kvennan area. And it’s fair to say he did and does a hell of a job. Since he started the Fly Fishing Only program (fair bag limit included) the amount and especially the average size of fish to be caught didn’t yet stop to increase year by year. No need to tell Hein is a fantastic guide for nymph, dry fly and streamer fishing on grayling and Brown trout. Besides the Glomma he knows probably every water in the area. And there are many great fishing waters. You may find a perfect overview about the best waters on fishspot. Gudmund Nygaard runs this fine website. A fantastic site full with exactly the information one needs to fly fish in one of the best areas for fly fishing in Norway! So if you ever go to Norway make sure to check this site as well as the Kvennan fly fishing website (providing all information about fly fishing the Glomma).

On Saturday Marina and I directly went over to the Norwegian fjord area around Surnadalsöra. There are lots of great places to be found for fly fishing here. What one needs to locate is CURRENTSPEED (created by tide movements). If you have the FAST current, you have the (often big) fish! I had been in the area quite a few times during the past 20 years and so I knew exactly where to start out. Within the first 10 casts I hooked up with no less than 10 fish. The same happened to Marina! Depending on the species of fish to catch we fished heavy sinking lines (sink rate 7) as well as floating lines. Our tippets never went below 0,35mm nylon! Usually 0,40mm does a perfect job. Our two (pretty catchy) favorite flies were a) the Baltic Candy and b) the Samsökiller. Those two flies presented in different sizes linked us to many different species of fish as some of them you may find in the pictures below. My favorite one was a truly beautiful wrasse offering me a nice fight!

Marina was that much satisfied of fly fishing the Norwegian fjord that she was wondering why yet I don’t offer a fly fishing trip here. And that seems to be an excellent question!? Next season I will change this and offer at least one trip in the beginning of July.

At the moment Marina and I are on our way to south Germany in order to search some more species of fish! Fair to say Marina is on (fly fishing) fire!

Same fantastic days to all of you!

All my best

Bernd

p.s.: Great to participate in the best competition there is: Having as less as possible none fishing days in 2015. I think Paul and I are back to be even at the moment! ;)

flyfishing with bernd ziesche
flyfishing school bernd ziesche