Rain at last — and a lesson in small flies
The upper Glomma has been running low and clear for weeks, and the hatches have thinned. Now the rain has arrived. River keeper Eirik Sætren expects the water to colour up a little, and thinks that may be exactly what the fishing needs.
Anyone out in Fishspot country over the past fortnight will recognise the picture: low water, bright water, and rises that ask a great deal of your eyesight. In his latest fishing reports from Kvennan, river keeper Eirik Sætren logs exactly that. "We are now into the first week of August, and the river is still running at a low level," he wrote on 5 August, with the gauge some 18 centimetres below the average for the date and the water at 13.75 degrees.
A week of small flies
"The past week has been a little slower, with fewer insect hatches and less surface activity than earlier in the season," Sætren reports. One thing has stayed constant, he says, for himself and for the visitors he talks to on the bank: "small flies and fine tippets have made the biggest difference."
A French group who fished Kvennan from 9 to 22 July came to the same conclusion, and sent Sætren their notes. They went down to size 20 and 24 in the slower sections, and rarely bigger than 14 or 16 in the current. "Some days produced 15–20 fish," writes Didier Lozano — mostly grayling from 25 to 35 centimetres, several in the 40s, one over 50.
The exception to the small-fly rule is wind. A week earlier Sætren described "large numbers of Daddy Longlegs" drifting across the surface, "creating exciting feeding opportunities". When that happens, he writes, "it's not unusual to see trout and grayling launching themselves out of the water".
What the rain may do
Rain was in the forecast when Sætren wrote on 5 August. "This will most likely affect the river, although it's difficult to say exactly how," he noted. "After such a long dry period, the rain will certainly be welcome."
His expectation: "I expect the river to become slightly coloured as the rainfall washes material into the water, but we'll have to wait and see how much the conditions change." And then the line that should have you packing rather than unpacking the car: "Interestingly, the rain itself may also improve the fishing." Drizzles and rain often triggers a hatch of Baetidae, and a little colour makes fish far less fussy about tippet diameter.
And bring the rain jacket. It has rarely been better news.
