Week 6: February 15 – 22, 2019
Another brilliant week has gone by at Villa Maria Lodge.
The group this week was formed by old-time repeaters, like Mark and John -founder and presidents of G&T team. Also, there were 3 special people to me, Rabbi, Jonni, and Helgi, all of whom I met in Iceland 15 years ago. I spent my summers teaming up with them while guiding over there. Örn, another Icelandic guide was part of the group, but he works on another world-renowned river, the Spey River in Scotland.
The river conditions remained the same as the prior weeks, low and clear. I can say that the weather was nice, as the temperatures and wind remained mild throughout the whole week with long periods of overcast conditions.
Those conditions helped a lot and the fishing was great both during the day and in lower light conditions and 20lbs+ fish were happy to take our flies. Jonni landed his first 20 pounder in the warm-up session at 7 pm, it was 14 C/ 57F degrees and a very mild breeze was just breaking the surface helping us to mask the landing of both line and fly.
Floating lines with long leaders and nymphs were the most successful set up as the low and clear water makes the fish skittish if you are not careful or delicate enough– and very often the typical skaggit lines and sink tips were too splashy and noisy for the conditions, especially when it’s not windy enough to mask their water entry.
Anyways, it was not all was just floaters and small flies. The sink tips did shine when the sun started to go down and the use of flies with bigger silhouette was required.
As flies go, the classics are still going strong. rubber legs, green machines, Pepe´s nymph, wonder bugs, prince nymphs, and leeches were most successful.
We are still waiting for some rain to stir things up a wee bit but the forecast says that we will have more sun and wind along the next week. Hope to see you soon on this magnificent river.
Largest fish of the week, 25 lbs.
Fish over 20 lbs: 12
Fish over 15 lbs: 38
Average fish weight: 12.7 lbs
Alejandro Martello
Villa Maria Lodge Fishing Manager
