The Minni Doesn’t Give Up Her Fish So Easily

If it was easy then it wouldn’t be rewarding, right? Right?

Looking at the map of the Minni I reckon I hiked 14 kilometers today. Maybe even more because I came back to the lodge for lunch and a snooze. Fishless on the Minni yesterday arvo. Fishless all day today. Sorry I don’t have any pics (yet) of the famous speckled Minni brown trout. But I have another chance tomorrow morning before I head back to Reykjavik to meet Jason. And I have a plan…

By mid afternoon the rain had given way to scattered showers and intermittent sunshine. Evening presented the world’s longest sunset. It must be this time of year in Iceland, that the sunset seems to take hours. When I headed back out of the lodge after my snooze I was kind of kicking myself for being lazy and sleeping because it looked to me like we only had a couple of hours of daylight left. That soft evening light lasted for 4 hours. Iceland didn’t seem to want to let go of the day.

Following the guides that I had read about fishing on the Minni, I threw small nymphs and the tinniest piss-ant midge flies (size 22) at the fish I saw and didn’t see. Then late in the sunset, just before the sun dipped below the horizon at around 8pm there was a massive hatch of midges. Clouds of them. But no surface activity at all. A fish that I saw hugged up against the side of a deep channel had billows of midges dipping the surface above him. A big fish, 6 pound by my reckoning. He did not move a centimeter from his lie. Just moving a little every now and then to keep his place in the current. I threw various patterns at him. I even tried a Woolly Bugger and a Royal Wulf. I was out of ideas.

Heading back to the lodge I made some new friends. These Icelandic horses are very inquisitive. And they like river weed. I must be like a salad.

I’ve been tackling this river by the book and so far drawn a blank. I have some big conehead streamers that have been sitting in one of my fly boxes just itching for a go. I can hear them ask me to take them out for a spin every time I open my old fly box.
Pick me! Pick me!

Ok boys. Your time to shine.

Rich