(Photography by Ben Carmichael & Eleven Experience)
December 12, 2024
By Ben Carmichael
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This article appeared in the 2021 Destinations special publication . Click here to purchase the 2024 edition of Destinations.
After nearly eight hours of driving, we stopped our rental car at an inconspicuous break in a farmer’s fence. An Icelandic flag high on a pole flapped in a strong wind off the Norwegian Sea. There were no signs, only a narrow dirt farmer’s track that disappeared up a steep hill. We pulled onto it, as the instructions from our host told us to, and downshifted into second. With the engine of the Dacia Duster whirring, we crested the hill and saw before us a vast and distant mountain range that gave way to farm fields dotted with hay bales. Winding down through the fields was the narrow, often deep incision that beckoned us: the crystalline Hölkná River, flowing into Iceland’s isolated northeast coast, where we had come to spend a week chasing Atlantic salmon.
In my addled angler’s mind, Iceland equates roughly to salmon, and so our hopes were high. In a summer when Iceland had experienced record droughts and one outfitter told me he lost his shirt, we learned that in the days prior to our arrival, two local guides had hooked more than 40 salmon on the river. “But don’t get too excited,” our host warned. Turning a corner, we passed the bony remains of a large bird caught in the barbed wire fence, its bones exposed, its head limp. Approaching the cabin, we passed the farmer’s truck which had written on the back the following words: “The Great Disaster.”
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At this point, my fishing partner Jonas and I turned to each other, laughed, and fell silent.
Hölkná River This trip to Iceland started on the way to my local town dump. I saw a friend pull into his driveway in his lovingly maintained vintage Land Rover, and I pulled in behind him to say hello. Out stepped John Harald Orneberg, a dapper, cerebral Swedish businessman and avid salmon angler. We got to chatting, which led to Jonas and me being in Iceland, a little over 2,600 miles as the crow flies from that Saturday morning errand.
(Photography by Ben Carmichael & Eleven Experience) Over a cup of coffee in the cook’s cabin, Harald told us about how he built these two cabins with Chad Pike, the founder of Eleven Experience, and described the 27 well-marked and named pools spread over 6.5 miles between a dramatic waterfall and the sea. Though not well known, the river has a small run with large fish. Only two rods per day are allowed on the river, which means you are often entirely alone at the bottom of a canyon in a very remote part of a very remote island.
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When asked about this area of northeast Iceland, Arni Baldursson, founder of the Lax-Á Angling Club, became almost wistful, saying, “It’s very special. It’s different than anything else in Iceland. Very few people there. Very few farms. The landscape is very different. It’s rustic. It’s the only place where the mountains turn into blue and purple in the evening—there’s something with the light. It’s totally different. The mountains are high, you will see snow.” He sighed. “It’s different.”
We elected to drive from Reykjavík to the river to allow us to see as much of the island as possible. Driving the main road across the northern coast, we crossed the Jökulsá á Fjöllum River, which flows off a drainage basin just smaller than South Carolina. We crossed via the only way possible: a single lane bridge just below the Dettifoss (translation: “the waterfall of the gods”), one of the most powerful in Europe. Following recent rains, the glacial river was raging, sending ivory glacial melt coursing across a vast black sand lava field the size of downtown Denver. This is where scenes from the movie Prometheus were shot—the landscape looks distinctly like watching primeval Earth being made.
From there, we drove across the Melrakkaslétta Peninsula which, in guidebooks, is described as “melancholy” and “forgotten.” This place, like many others, completely evaded my attempts at pronunciation.
A volcanic eruption here left the land close to sterile, forcing settlers to flee. From the safety of our rental car, the land looked not only inhospitable but downright hostile to human life. I kept patting the Duster’s dashboard and verbally encouraging it not to break down. According to the guidebook I read as we drove, this area was said to be protected by the Vopnafjörður, a fjord that was home to a fearsome dragon—a fact to which I nodded all too matter-of-factly.
On our first evening of fishing, Harald kindly showed us the river. Using his 4Runner, we drove to the top pool, just below the falls. This daily trip—getting to the riverbank and back to camp safely—turned out to be a twice-daily expedition. On the first morning, Harald’s 4Runner crossed a stream strong enough that I was certain that had we tried to ford it in our rental car, it would have been deposited below the nearby falls. Once parked by a diminutive white pool sign, we hiked. Many of Iceland’s rivers are at the bottoms of steep canyons, to which you have to navigate on foot. Some rivers have ladders, some have ropes from which you belay yourself. In other places, you’re totally on your own.
I asked Sigurður Héðinn, the fly tier who created the Haugur, arguably Iceland’s most famous modern salmon fly and after which he is now known, what fishermen should expect at the Hölkná. “The river is rather demanding,” he said. “Most of the rivers are rather demanding physically. It’s not so easy.”
Fishing this river for the first time, Jonas and I adopted a maximum coverage approach. This was good in theory, but it meant that we climbed into and out of these canyons dozens of times a day. In a single evening session, Jonas’s watch clocked that he had walked more than eight miles. Prior to our trip, my father, a gym rat in his early 80s who had fished other rivers in Iceland, declared that he could not physically handle going back.
(Photography by Ben Carmichael & Eleven Experience) Simple Luxury The two cabins on the Hölkná reminded me of a saying my father is prone to quoting: “all the simplicity money can buy.” Modest in size and painted black, the two cabins rest overlooking a bend in the lower part of the river. They are connected by a short gravel walk, and a large cowboy cauldron fire pit for warmer nights. Both have two bedrooms, with room for a small family.
In our cabin, aged leather chairs, a cast iron wood stove, and a skin rug overlooked the river through a large bay window. All the details were meticulous: radiant heat black stone flooring and glass in the bathroom; beautiful rustic wooden table and large leather couch in the old cabin, framed by a large, aged map of Iceland; a small, nice kitchen; and a collection of salmon books and small antler mounts. Built and renovated by our host Harald and Chad Pike, the investor behind Eleven Experience, whose lodge Deplar Farm is nearby on the Fljótaá River, and whose guests fish this river, the cabins were simple, beautiful, and incredibly comfortable.
While there is room for two small families, one in each, we were treated to the luxury of staying in one cabin while Tara, our chef, stayed in the other. In driving toward the cabins on the 4x4 track road, Harald would call ahead and Tara would have a tray of coffee, homemade granola bars, and Swedish cheeses waiting for us—or, at night, a bottle of wine. It would be hard to overstate how luxurious this felt after facing the rain and wind off the Norwegian Sea. She also would send us off on the river with a Thermos of hot tea or coffee, and a wrapped confection, which, during a break from fishing, I remember coveting like Samwise and Frodo coveted lembas bread.
(Photography by Ben Carmichael & Eleven Experience) Physical & Technical Siggy Héðinn had meant his comment about Icelandic fishing in another way: In addition to being physically demanding, it is also technically not so easy. When I spoke with April Vokey about Iceland, she agreed, saying, “Of the Atlantic salmon trips I’ve taken, Iceland is certainly the most unique. It’s not so much the size of the fish or the way they fight, rather the challenge of figuring out how to catch them. Some salmon fisheries can begin to feel repetitive and mindless, but Iceland always kept me on my toes.”
The water clarity on the river was absolutely crystal, akin to the Bonaventure on Canada’s Gaspé Peninsula. Standing at the top of a canyon wall and looking down, you could very easily spot fish and see them moving to flies. Given this clarity, fly fishers in Iceland often use what are called hitched microtube flies. In a shop in Reykjavík, I suggested they needed a magnifying glass: One of these flies fit easily onto the nail of my little finger.
These plastic tubes, with a few colorful wisps of hair on them, are incredibly effective, but how to fish them is debated; we got as many answers as people we asked. Through all of this advice, one thing became clear: Slowing down the fly was crucial. According to Baldur Snorrason, a guide and investment manager (not an entirely unusual combination in Iceland), “You cast and then start mending like your life depends upon it.” With water temperatures in the high 30s to low 40s, I could see why.
In the crystal-clear waters in eastern Québec, we often use Bombers. Baldur commented, “Water is water, and salmon are salmon. But the Bomber fishing? That is completely new here.” One other guide said, “Somehow it does not work here or not as effectively as in Canada.” And yet, when nothing else seemed to be working, I tied on a Labatt Blue Bomber and dropped it blindly in a few spots. Within 10 minutes, I had raised two salmon, and played one. Another night, I raised another repeatedly.
But not all Icelandic flies are as subtle as the microtubes. The Red Francis is perhaps the most-used salmon fly in Iceland, and also its most contentious. With a big brass cone on the front of a bright red carrot with long, stiff tassels coming off the back, it’s a sight to behold, and a nightmare to cast. When it’s launched well upstream and allowed to swing in front of a salmon’s nose, one of two things is likely to happen: The fish slams the fly, or you shut down the entire pool. In Icelandic fly shops we stopped in, it was not unusual to see a Red Francis framed with a plaque that read: “Break glass in case of emergency.” When asked about the fly, one guide looked away, put down his coffee, and said, “The Francis? It ruins pools. It absolutely cleans out pools and shuts them down for days.”
And shut down the river was. I later found out that the guides who had hooked over 40 fish immediately before us had used the Red Francis. If the river has a run of approximately 200 salmon, and the guides hooked a quarter to a third of the salmon in the river, then most were off the dance floor.
(Photography by Ben Carmichael & Eleven Experience) Thin Ribbons of Blue On a few occasions, I found myself fishing alone. One time, I slid down a canyon to explore an unmarked pocket of water and was surveying the cliff walls that rose around me like stone curtains the size of condo buildings when I spotted a lone sheep, chewing and staring at me from an outcropping that I thought he must have occupied for a millennium, as I saw no way onto or off of it. On another evening, I stood atop a small mound on the canyon wall and surveyed the scene. But for a single narrow path through the low vegetation, there were no visible signs of human life. Below me, a thin ribbon of bright blue river water coursed. The skies had cleared, and the mountains behind me were changing colors in the evening light. Later that fall, in reading Roderick Haig-Brown’s To Know a River, I found the words to express what I felt then. “A river is water in its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the life-blood returns to the heart.”
Here in Iceland, the blood was at times blue, at times milky white, and the steep canyon walls often the deepest black. Throughout the week, strong weather blew off the Arctic Ocean, the cold northern heart into which the Hölkná flowed. Though it was August, we experienced days with highs in the 30s and 40s with a light but steady rain that stripped us of warmth. I wore layered winter hats and lost feeling in my toes, while Harald wore battery-powered full-leg warmers designed for use in diving in the Arctic Ocean. I felt the way I imagine those divers feel: immersed and cold, but happy to be exploring a place mostly unseen, and foreign to many.
On the first evening of fishing, I caught a grilse (an adolescent salmon) and, with the enthusiasm found only at the start of a trip, thought our timing was perfect. After each subsequent session and lost fish informed me that my first would, in fact, be my only caught salmon of the trip, I began to wonder about what salmon fishing in Iceland is all about.
In answer to this question over an espresso in Reykjavík, guide and Loop rod designer Klaus Frimor said, “There’s a very, very limited number of rods. And of course, Iceland has been a very stable salmon fishery for many, many years. It has been incredibly good. If you do the math, in some years on some rivers they caught close to four fish a day. Sometimes you might get ten fish a day. In Nordura, I got 11 fish in one and a half hours.”
He was making the case that salmon fishing in Iceland can be a good value, per catch. Baldur also spoke to this. Siggy Héðinn confirmed this, saying, “If you fish Iceland in prime time, you can expect two to four salmon per day. The average numbers here are very good, especially if you are here in the prime time. The southwest, prime time is beginning of July to third week of July. And in the east, it’s the third week of July to the second week of August.”
(Photography by Ben Carmichael & Eleven Experience) Often, those salmon will not be big. “In Iceland, you get smaller fish, but lots of them,” said Klaus. “East coast, there are quite a few fish from 10 to 18 pounds. You never get those monsters here. There’s a couple of rivers here where you get the odd 20 to 22 pounds.” Music fans take note: Eric Clapton’s nearly 30-pound salmon from the Vatnsdalsá River, which he fishes annually, was largely an outlier.
That is changing, thanks to the growing popularity of catch-and-release fishing in Iceland. It is now mandatory that fish over 70 cm, or 27 inches, be released. “Catch-and-release is a strong culture. It hasn’t been here that many years, but it spread really fast,” said Baldur. “Anglers, we do understand that these rivers are our natural pools, they are something we should take care of.” But he acknowledged they do take some salmon. “I can feel with foreigners coming, they expect catch-and-release,” he said. “But we are a nation of fishing. So there are a lot of people here who can’t fathom the idea of catching something and not eating it. The mindset is, we’re a fishing nation.”
“I understand it is an expensive thing to do,” he said. “But then, what is salmon fishing? If you just want to go fishing, there are plenty of places to go fishing. But if you want to have an experience?”
He summed it up, “If I catch one a shift, I am extremely happy. If I catch one a day, I am happy. And if you don’t see anything in the water, don’t get discouraged. Turn around and look at the view.”
Book Your Destination From John F. Kennedy International Airport, it’s an easy four-hour direct flight to Reykjavik. If you have a certificate of vaccination you do not need to quarantine or show a current PCR test.
Hölkná Lodge – elevenexperience.com
Recommended Gear In Iceland, much of the fishing is with tiny flies and microtubes in extremely clear water. A shorter switch rod with a Scandinavian-type shooting head and a selection of light sinking Airflo Polyleaders is well suited to the task.
Ben Carmichael is a writer, editor, and photographer. His work is regularly featured in magazines, and used by conservation organizations and fly-fishing brands. He manages a website called New England on the Fly . As the son of bamboo rod maker and author Hoagy Carmichael, he grew up with slow rods, vintage reels, and the smells of fresh metal shavings and varnish.
