Learning the hard way

The social media is full of great looking fishing trips showcasing the great success of the fishermen and women that posted them. What nobody usually talks about are the multiple trips that were not a great but that gave us knowledge and wisdom that eventually led to the fishing trip of a lifetime.

This is short story about one of the less successful fishing trips that provided me tons of new knowledge but fairly poor fishing.

Here is the original plan for a weeks fishing trip to northern Norway of Finnmark as it is called usually.

Two guys

Two 30kg backpacks

First real hike and fish style trip

About 50km of hiking in the fells on a well planned route

Fishing both lakes and rivers

Targeting on big grayling, brown trout and the first arctic char with a fly

Making a film of the trip

Getting some awesome photographs

Expectation of a normal northern weather close (between 12-17c)

And well afterwards I can say that pretty much everything went differently then I had planned it. Even so we learned a hell of a lot about hike fish style trips in a week.

Here's how the trip actually went. 

Before we even got to our car we were expecting a weather around 10c in the north and we chose our gear accordingly. Lots of warm clothes like wool shirts, beanies and long johns. As we got to Norway it soon dawned on us that it was not going to be cool days and nights in the north but quite the opposite as the forecast changed for our week from cold to insanely hot.

We started our hike with the temperature being closer to 25c the whole day and way into the night. This made the first 15-20km really hard for us first-timers. 

Then we realized that our original route plan would not take us to our first basecamp the first day because the route took us into an area that was surrounded with a really hard going swamp. So we made camp a bit earlier then we were planning and decided to fish for a day on the small but beautiful river near the camp and then try to find a path through the swamp the next day.

The next day scouting the surroundings made it very clear that we would have to hike back the way we came and then get to higher ground for easier walking. At this point we decided not to try to get to the first basecamp but to go straight on to the main campsite which would be our camp for the rest of the trip. This meant a hard climb and hike over a big fell and adding closer to 20km more to our walking distance.

We went to sleep tired and sweaty as the temperature had climbed to 27c and the sun and heat had drained us out. The next morning began even more hot than the other day. We were faced with a question could we do the hard hike in that heat? 

We had a long talk about our options and the weather just did not seem to be on our side as the forecast promised more extreme heat for the next few days and then heavy rain storms after that. So we decided not to push our luck and so we packed the camp and started our hike back to the car with the temp rising close to 30c.

That pretty much killed the camping part of the trip and we ended up driving around Finnmark looking for new fishing spots closer to the roads and trying to avoid the heavy rains rolling over the area.

This meant a lot less fishing than I had hoped but it did take us to many new fishing spots and areas I had never even heard of but which I will definitely visit again some day.

The trip ended into Finnish Lapland on the river Könkämäeno. The river where I went on my first Lapland fly fishing trip many years ago. It holds a very special place in my heart even though this time the river did not show us it's best side. It was still great to be there again and we also meet the owner of Graylingland Aki Huhtanen there. He once again had great tips for us on his home river which we of course listened carefully. 

After that we left for home with nothing really amazing to tell about fishing but with a lot of useful information in our pockets for future fishing trips to the north. 

And so we did not catch a lot fish and even less the big fish. There is now film about the trip because of the short time we actually were fishing. Most of the photos are from the first three days the weather was nice and after that I didn't really feel like taking photos in the rain. 

Still I feel that the couple of good photos I did get deserve to be seen so here they are and thanks for reading about our trip.

-JanneV-