Viking Lars | Saturday, 12 October 2024
Good quality fishing for trout on lakes is really hard to come by in Denmark, which is why I enjoy travelling to Hökensås in Sweden. Hökensås have over 25 small lakes and a couple of stretches of river. Yes, they are stocked, but it’s done conservatively and while you can expect to catch trout it’s not given. The fish are left to become as wild as they can, so they act as wild fish and can be both as easy and hard to catch as true wild fish.
The water quality in the lakes is very high. The area is what’s called a “high pressure deformation zone”, which is basically terrain and topography features created during the ice ages, where expanding and reaching ice deformed the landing. As they ice from the last ice age melted, huge chunks of ice were left and the “holes” they left are now lakes. The nature is natural and beautiful pine forrest with heather, low growth berries and more. Just a beautiful area all in all.
The clear water is an excellent habitat for a lot of different insect species, perch, sticklebacks and many other types of bait. Making all the lakes perfect habitats for trout. As a sportsfshing area with trout it was created in the 1950s.
What I’m getting to is the lead - that this kind of fishing is impossible to come by in Denmark and since it’s so interesting fishing and sometimes very difficult and technical, I go to Hökensås every now and then. On some lakes it’s allowed to fish from float tubes, which is love to do (which is another reason to go there), some lakes have a limited numbers of day tickets, some lakes have boat or two, so there’s something for everyones.
One great advantage of fishing from a float tube, boat or pontoon boat is that you can have two, even three pre-rigged rods ready to switch between In a matter of 30 seconds. During the day I had two 5-wts, one with a floating line and one rigged for shooting heads of a sinking variety. As evening approached I put in my 4-wt ready for the evening midge rise.
We had three days of dead calm evenings and fish feeding on midges. The is some of the best and most frustrating fishing I know of. Even in a float tube, you can’t get to them - you have to wait for them to come near, which is a hit or miss. Sitting as still as you can to avoid pushing fish away, you’ll eventually freeze your feet off. But when they do come close, everything is as you’ve read about in the books. Slow motion head and tails - 2-3-4-5 of them, the fish staying on the same heading, rises every foot or so. It requires a very precise and times cast. When it all comes together, it’s the best I know.
As prepared as I like being and usually am, I really failed on the last evening. I did have the 4-wt ready, a 0.15mm leader and a size very small midge on. I got refusals on the first 3 or 4 presentations and I clearly needed a thinner leader. I had my readers on, but in the dim light it took me forever to tie on the new tippet and even longer to tie on the fly, threading the leader through the minute hook eye. Never again +1 readers when going fishing. +2 it is from now and till I’ll need +3 and so on. Oh - and remember the Fuller’s Earth. Without that the 0,15mm leader, even the 0,12mm I tied on, would have been floating ropes on the dead calm surface.
Should you have equations about the fish, a link to accommodation, ways to get there - catch me on a PM on the Board.
Have a great weekend!
Lars
PoD: My friend and colleague, Jens, with one of the beautiful rainbow trout that have spent the winter in the lake. They are the ones that are shiny.