It’s a heartache

The last four days we’ve been out by the Swedish rivers up north shooting, and it sure is with mixed emotions we sum up our first days. With water temperatures hitting more than 18 degrees even before the end of May, resulting in some rivers with no kill regulation, closing down fishing due to the significant increase in mortality when practising catch and release. 

Now we’ve seen a few degrees drop to the right side of ok. But along the rivers, fly fishers reports that the runs so far are slow; and you can’t help picking up on that feeling of hopelessness.

Thomas Johansson, secretary general at the Baltic Salmon Fund confirms:

- It looks like our pre-season fears are coming true. The runs are really slow and at the moment we don’t see any signs of change. The reports we are receiving from our network, out at sea, from the costal fisheries and from the wild rivers all points in the same directions – there are just so few salmon around these days.

At the time of writing, Byske has had 146 salmon passing through the fish counter in Fällfors (8/6) and at Kattilakoski in Torneälven 620 individuals (6/6).

Though, Thomas reminds that we still are early in the season.

- We are just in the beginning of June. We must wait and see and let’s keep our fingers crossed for the runs to pick up within the next couple of weeks.

But at the moment, this is nothing short of a heartache.