Fishing in Sweden

In the Land of the Vikings

The Gimdalen community, where I was based for three weeks, consists of 80-90 fulltime residents.
All knew each other. The township had a number of communal facilities, including an illegal pub and an elaborate guesthouse known as Kullagarden.

The guest house entertained some interesting folk while I was in residence — mainly fishermen. The scenery around Gimdalen was beautiful — pastures surrounding houses with masses of wildflowers and Roe deer grazing the fringes. Tractors ploughed fields and harvested hay. Buildings were all painted a traditional red-brown colour with white trim and copper brick roofs. These communities were centuries old.

My host, Leif Milling, was a professional photographer with overwhelming charm and a contagious enthusiasm. His cabin was situated by the Gimdalen Stream where grayling rose freely and rods were always stored on the front porch for when the need to fish became unbearable.

The scenery in Sweden was beautiful. Trees were numerous in many places — pine, fir, silver birch. Rivers ran dark and stained with tannin. There were an abundance of lakes, with creeks and small rivers flowing between them. Unexplored potential abounded. The grayling lived in the rivers during summer and inhabited the lakes during iceout in winter. The rivers were hard to wade, with deep holes and big rocks smoothed from glaciation. A wading staff was essential.

Roe deer, European moose, lynx, and capercaille inhabited these ancient woods. The Swedes were keen hunters. Even during the summer, they trained their dogs.

The daylight hours were awesome. Being far enough north and close to the Arctic Circle, it never got totally dark in summer. It was a strange feeling wearing sunglasses at 11pm. The long days exhausted the body and confused the mind. Dinner at 4am was an odd sensation.

The temperature was changeable, somewhere between 8-25C — either hot or cold, with not much in between. It was often overcast with cold breezes.

Grayling proved a spectactular fish. Decorated with silver, bronze, and pewter flanks and a huge mis-shaped dorsal fin that contains the colours of the rainbow, they were fish of dreams. A member of the greater whitefish family, they have a mouth that faces downwards, but it is here that all similarity ends. The grayling is a fine sporting fish with selective eating habits and an alarmingly fast strike. They liked dry flies, but nymph fishing was deadly. They inhabited the fast water and were strong fighters.

Idsjostrommen was an impressive piece of water. Draining Lake Idsjon, this 2km tailwater fishery is widely regarded as one of the finest grayling streams in Sweden. Privately owned, but managed as a catch and release, exclusive pay-as-you-fish stream, it was stuffed full of big grayling.

Swedish fish and game areas were broken up into archaic, ill-defined small patches of turf administered by small communities and private landowners. There was no national licence and a regional licence cost $150 Kr per week for a non-resident.The daily charge on Idjostrommen was $150Kr (about $30US) and anglers often booked months in advance to reserve space at the prime times. Space was limited to a maximum of 10 anglers per day. Once your feet touched the water at Idjostrommen, there was no doubt that the daily charge was a bargain at triple the price. On my visit, grayling were everywhere, rising to large yellow May duns and caddis. The top 1km of the beat was the best and offered phenomenal dry fly fishing.

Idjostrommen was a classic example of a well-managed fishery. Once virtually annihilated due to Swedish fish-kill mentality, it had had an amazing recovery in the previous eight years. The grayling were fat, colorful, well conditioned, and fought well. Some showed signs of capture with hook marks and missing maxilliaries, due to “ripping their lips” on hard strikes.

We had some classic fishing here and I was even berated for catching too many. Nymph fishing was just too easy. The Swedes had no idea of upstream nymphing with a strike indicator and a pair of small nymphs. On one occasion, I had them lining up for me to rig their rods with indicators and nymphs. They’d jump in the water, laughing hysterically, as the bright yellow indicator dipped and dived on virtually every cast. The riverkeeper accused me of unsportsmanlike fishing methods. Funnily enough, Milling caught the same accuser fishing the next morning with an indicator and double nymphs. The riverkeeper was very embarrassed.

Sweden also had many other types of fish. Pike fishing was great in the many weedy lakes surrounding Gimdalen. Pike are very under-rated. Olive green with gold stripes and vertical bars, they proved extremely voracious and ate virtually anything.

Locals targeted pike, many around 8-10kg, with big spinning gear and multi-coloured, garish looking fluorescent lures mounted with three sets of treble hooks. Favourite weed-beds in Lake Mysson inevitably produced pike and perch. I caught many smaller pike on fly, usually with sinking lines, but usually had my hawser-diameter nylon bitten through by larger specimens. Perch were easily captured, stripping a pair of nymphs through and around shallow weed beds. Perch are the primary food source of pike and are lovely table fish. Perch are known as Aborre in Swedish, are very plentiful, and become a prime winter target when lakes freeze and holes can be drilled in the ice. With vertical bars, green back, dark stripes, silver bellies, red fins, and spiny dorsal fins, perch were fun to catch and eat. Pike were not so palatable.

Milling and I did a lot of trolling with Rapala lures on the lake, within walking distance of his house and caught some lovely pike at all times of the day and night. These pike had a rocket-like attack, and sight fishing, waiting in ambush around lake edges and fallen trees, provided some classic adrenaline surges, as the pike charged and savaged a stripped fly.
Id were a classically beautiful lake fish. Like a technicolour carp with large scales, Id were green, gold, and bronze with large red under fins. Feeding predominantly on insects, they rose to the surface beautifully. One day we encountered a midday hatch of huge lake Mayflies. The largest dries I had were #8 Irresistables and #10 Green Drakes, which were way too small. But the Id ate them anyway. Id strikes were the slowest I’ve ever encountered — you had to count to five or six before setting the hook.

The fish had cast-iron mouths and you could feel the hook grating inside the mouth before it found a hold.
Such hard mouths often bent or straightened hooks. The explosive takes of Id usually caused premature strikes, but once hooked they were awesome fighters, powering off into the lake with supreme strength, despite a big one probably only weighing 2.5kg.

We also chased elusive Arctic char further north in the bare, windswept, glaciated mountains of Jamptland, a few hours south of the Arctic Circle. Here, ice has permanently sculpted the landscape and tattooed impressive striation marks across huge expanses of rock. Lower down, the slopes were green and heavily vegetated with beautiful forests inhabited by moose, bear, and lynx.

In the remote valleys we found the semi-nomadic farms of the aboriginal Swedes — the Lapps. Looking more Asian than European, these hardy people farmed reindeer. Principally meat-eaters, their favourite delicacy was dried, rancid, reindeer fat. Arctic char were the first fish to inhabit Sweden after the last Ice Age, with brown trout following soon after. Lapp reindeer herders travel up to 20,000km a year on their snowmobiles, keeping their herds under control during the harsh northern winters.

We fished private lakes at the hospitality of the local Lapp community, which had started a tourist venture. We walked miles across tundra, through forests and over cascading waterfalls. Some of the single log bridges took our breath away.

We finally were ferried by boat up one lake and through a narrow chasm into another larger lake, home to the Arctic char. The weather was cold and bleak and the char didn’t come to the surface and eat dry flies, so we dredged deep with nymphs and streamers and managed to catch a few, along with some brown trout.

The best way to catch char, we discovered, was trolling a set of flashing, revolving blades that had a single hook dangling behind, baited with fresh maggots off our meat supply.

The whole Swedish experience proved something very profound, unique, and incomparable.

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