It’s one of those places in the world that will leave deep prints in your fly-fishing mind! Gin-clear waters, breathtaking scenery, and strong, sea-running char that will nail down your fly on the surface!
BY HENRY SCHMIDT
Three degrees and pouring rain. That’s exactly what awaits us outside the plane on this old US Airbase in West Greenland. It’s mid-July, and after several hours of flying from Copenhagen, we finally reach our destination – Sisimiut. We’ll stay here in Greenland’s second biggest town (5500 inhabitants) for one night. Time to fill up the personal beer and chocolate reservoirs for the coming days in the wilderness. Since we had some time this afternoon, we went out for some sightseeing. It’s a busy time here for the locals. The summer is short, and stocks for the hard winter have to be filled. Everybody seems to be a fisherman and hunter in this town, and you can see the tough life on their faces. It’s a very different world here in the Arctic, with its beautiful, but also dark pages.
The night was short, and after a nice breakfast and the last shower until next week, everybody was looking forward to the coming fishing adventure. All gear and food for the coming week in the wilderness have been checked, and we’re ready to go. The ocean was calm this morning, and as a bonus, the sun pushed away the clouds. We enjoyed the rough landscape with coffee and some sandwiches. After three hours on the ocean, we entered a big fjord. The scene was magical, gin-clear bluish water surrounded by 1000m high mountains with a lot of snow and ice on top! Because of the nice weather, we reached the end of the fjord one hour earlier. We had to wait for the high tide, so there was some time to fish with hand lines for Cod. That was fun, and the chef was happy with that too. And at this point, we also saw the first char following the lures when pulling them fast to the boat!
Fishing mode on! The crew has stored all the gear in the two Jet boats that we had carried behind the Mother ship. With these boats, we’re able to enter the sea pool in the river. That will save us a lot of time and power. The ATV was waiting at the entry point, ready to bring our gear to the camp. After 30 minutes, everything was unloaded, and the captain with his crew were sailing away after saying goodbye! This feeling was a bit strange because: Now we were all alone in the wilderness of the Arctic Circle! Alone, no human noise, no mobile phone, and a whole river for ourselves. Fantastic!
“The average size in this river is about 60cm! Strong fighting, airborne fish that never give up”.
Everybody was fixing the gear and personal tents. The first rods and waders came out of the bag, and it feels more and more like a fishing camp! While the chef was doing his job in the kitchen, the tour leader had a meeting about some rules, moving in the wilderness, and of course about fishing. On that first day, we went all together for the first try. We had to walk about 40 minutes to the first pool with fish in it. This is the pool where the char are stopping for the first time after the long run from the sea. There are great takers here and shiny silver – fresh from the ocean! It doesn’t take long for the first fights and happy faces! Streamers and nymphs are the best choice for the first pools. Everybody got one or two fish and really happy and a little euphoric, we went back to the camp! The fresh Cod was waiting together with some wine and other nice things that make anglers happy after a hard day out there. We stopped for the day, and after some exciting stories and a good whiskey, everybody went tired into their sleeping bags… what a nice first day! I fell asleep very happy and well done after some seconds.
24/7 It never gets dark here in the Arctic summer! That’s why fishing never ends with “sunset”! It will muddle up your inner clock, but fishing a small creek in the hills at 2 o’clock in the night is a good reason to miss a little sleep. My friend and I were out all night. After we hiked 4 hours up the hills and found this pool, we had an amazing fishing experience! The char attacked the hitched foam flies so aggressively under the midnight sun that the herd seems to stop for a while! Crazy fly-fishing with five or six weight rods, 0.28mm leaders, and plenty of backing.
The average size in this river is about 60cm! Strong fighting, airborne fish that never give up. The biggest we landed was 82cm, but we saw some bigger ones as well! Massive char, some silver, some males with this awesome red, green, and orange spawning colors. This is one of the few places in the world where you want to catch a colorful fish. Some of them are looking so unreal, so beautiful… that you couldn’t take your eyes off it. Releasing a fish like this, in a landscape like this, makes you feel big and small at the same time! This moment is just for you and your fishing buddy. There is no chance to share it directly with the world. That’s one of the things you’re going to miss at home!
After some hours of fishing we decided to get back to the camp! Three hours of hiking along the creek, of course, stopping for some casts when there was a good fish in one of these nice deep pools. And there was a lot of fish! I have never seen that many fish in a river! I was thinking about how all the other rivers in the world would look like if there were no commercial fishing…
Camp life at 72 degrees north Every evening when we arrived back in the camp, we sat down on the high bank of the sea pool with a cold beer and watched the tide coming up. At the highest point of about 3-4 meters, the char entered the pool in small groups. It was fantastic to see hundreds of fresh fish coming from the ocean for spawning high up in the creek!
The impressive numbers of fish and the nice scenery, with big wide valleys between the high, snow and ice covered mountains, left a deep print in everybody’s mind. And so you forget the problems outside this world. All the stress of the “normal” world is gone after 1-2 days. There were only happy faces in the evening when we all arrived at the camp.
Like always when fishing, the days passed by quickly. Especially when they are filled with a lot of new impressions and of course when catching fish with some of your best friends. Tomorrow, the captain will arrive to bring us back to civilization. Time for a last nice dinner with fresh char and all the other delicious things that the chef has created! After dinner, some went out for a last cast, we fixed the camp and finished the day with a good drink and the certainty of have had a fantastic time up here! There were also some rumors that we’ll come back, for sure!
