Call of the north

For any flyfisherman who has ever fished in the extremely beautiful northern parts of Finland, Sweden or Norway the sentence "Call of the north" should be well known. With the fishing season being so short up north especially for salmon there is only 3 good months to do it. This means a lot of people hear the call and get the salmon fever way before the actual season starts. The same happened with me and my three friends this year. We decided to do this years trip a little differently. Normally we rent a cabin close to a nice river and move around with cars but this time we were planning to hike to a river, sleep in tents and do the moving around with our feet.
We are not experienced hikers so we decided that the river should not be too far from the road but just enough that it would keep away some of the other salmon fishermen.

The destination river we came up with is in northern Norway or Finnmark as it is called by the locals. Only one of us had ever fished the river so it was quite exciting for the rest of us to hear the stories from our friends trips. The stories did little to help with the salmon fever building up and it was still months before the season even started. So we decided to get ready and prep ourselves for the trip. This meant getting a lot of new gear and running around in many stores but it felt like doing something related to the actual trip. This made time go faster and the trip got closer and closer each day.

On Saturday 18th of July we all meet on Helsinki-Vantaa airport with our huge bags and backpacks. We were ready to go. We took a quick flight to Rovaniemi and continued by car up north.

The first night we camped in Utsjoki and a quick trip to River Teno. Not too much more to tell you about that but it was fun to get our gear out after a long wait.

The next day we drove to Finnmark and started the hard walk towards our destination. I was prepared to sweat a little because of the walk and heavy backpack but I was surprised of the hard climbs and rocky paths we had to take. It took us hour and a half to get to the river so I figured that was ok for a first timer.

The hard walk was quickly forgotten when we finally saw the beautiful little river and our campsite for the week. I had to hold back my urge to just grab my rod and running to the river. We still needed to prepare our camp and eat something before fishing. After everything was set we finally got our gear out and got down to business. The water level was very low so the only good choice was a one hand rod and a floating line. My friend who had been fishing on the river before let us know that only smaller flies would be needed from size 6 and down to 12. Picking which fly was also easy with his advice so we got everything ready in a record time and made our way to the river.

That first night did not give us any fish and the low water seemed to be a real challenge we would need to tackle through the week. The next morning I was up and fishing before everyone else and there seemed to be nobody else on the river from any of the other camps. So I got to fish one the best pools just by myself. It took me three casts before a fish showed itself. A nice fish around 5 kilos or so jumped in the end of the pool. I made my cast just right and my fly went swinging right past its nose. The fish took it with a fierce strike and then all hell broke loose. Even though the fish wasn't that big it was still fresh from the run and very strong. My eightweight rod was bent to the max as I fought with the silver devil. The fish got me running and doing all sorts of tricks before it finally was ready be pulled on the beach. It was a great feeling to start the trip with a good fish like this and on a singlehand rod.

My fight had drown some attention from the nearby camp and so I got some help with the photos. It's always nice to get better pics then I could have gotten with my Gopro so thanks for that guys.

This first fish really made my trip and after that everything else fell into place. I landed a couple of fish every day along our 5 day trip there. Nothing too big but from 1kg to 5kg. I saw much bigger fish also but they were not playing. For me this was the best salmon fishing trip I have ever had. I'm not really experienced on the art of salmon flyfishing so to get 6 Salmon and 2 Seachar on the same trip was amazing.

My numbers might have been even better but I used a lot of my time exploring the beautiful river which was close to 30km long and our camp was located on the midsection of it. I took a walk upstream and down just to see what the river was like and boy was I surprised how much the pools changed. The pools upstream were clear and deep with a lot of elevation. A lot of the bigger fish I saw swam in these pools and I was really close to getting a nice 10kg fish to take my sunray shadow on one these pools. Just the sheer beauty of the pools was so impressive that I ended up staying upstream the whole day. I could easily see why most of the camps are in the upper areas of the river.

I also took a walk down stream and yet again I was surprised with the different pools. Here the pools were also quite deep but also long and with less current. These were searun pools proved to have a lot of fish but they also saw a lot of action from the local fishermen. The biggest and the best known pool had around 100 Salmon just waiting for their turn to go up the river. I sat on the shore just watching the guys fish there for 3 hours or so and they had 5 salmon on between those hours. No wonder why it was so popular. The lower parts were a longer way away from our own camp and there was no easy paths from the main road to those pools. I found out that the easiest way to get there was by a local transfer boat. This is something I needed to keep in mind for the years to come.

Friday and the end of our Norway trip came too fast as always. We hiked back to the car and this time it was much easier as my feet were already getting used to the walking. After packing the car we drove straight to Inari for the last few days of our trip.

My trip was crowned the next day on one of Finlands most known big Browntrout streams called Juutua. I fished with one of my friends for a half day there. We knew nothing of the place so it was pretty much go with your gut type of fishing.

On one of the amazing looking rapids I got a very good size trout to rise on my white marabou muddler but it missed the hit. We tried all sorts of other flies but the fish just wasn't interested at all.

So we gave up and changed places looking for more fish. After a while I found some nice graylings feeding close by and got so involved with them that I didn't realize my friend had already gone to our car and waited me to move to the next location down the river. He called me and told me to get up to the car so I started making my way back. On my way to the car I passed the same place where we so the big brown a little earlier and I had to give it one more go. I took a black marabou muddler and tied it on my five weight rod. First cast about 45 degrees across and the fly swan right where the fish first showed itself. Boom! The fish came through the surface with a huge jump and I felt my line going tight and then the reel started screaming. My rod bent like crazy and backing was flying out of the reels as the beast too down the rapids. It took me awhile to get him to stop and under control. I quickly reach for my phone and called my friend to came and help me to land this thing. Just as I put my phone away the fish got its strength back and made some amazing jumps and then took downstream like a bat out of hell. I was so sure it would get unhook by the jumping and running that I was almost shaking in my waders.

With some luck the hook stayed on and my friend got to the beach with me just in time to help me get it to the net. He did a great job with my little net and landed the fish. I can't tell you guys how happy and thankful I was at that point. 
We took some hero shots and then it was time to put the awesome looking fish back to the river where it belonged. This was a perfect end to the trip as far as the fishing goes.

On our way to the airport we did get some car problems that dampened the mood of the trip a bit but that's another story.