Bolstad river – so classic but so very hurt by the fish farming madness!

The last couple of days didn’t see any big change. I managed to hook two good fish in Bolstadhölen, one around 20 lbs and one I never could judge. The hard rain kept on and the river rose up to over 100m 3/s meaning it doubled in size in a few days. Cold and tricky but most of all very few fish running. To sum it all up we managed 9 landed and a few lost fish for the group. More than last year but fewer than we were hoping for. Interesting to notice is that most of the fish were hooked on a retrieved fly on the low water part of the week. When current isn’t enough it pays off to retrieve a bit – fly speed is as always of great importance for the result.

It’s so nice to be in Bolstad but at the same time so very depressing how we have let the fish farming industry ruin what once was maybe the best big fish river of them all. The river, the pools are still there but the lack of fish is so obvious. The smolt program pulling smolts thru the sea lice belts in the fjord make some survive but as long as the fjord is full of farms the river is doomed to go under. It’s a very sad reality – we need to keep fighting no matter what!

Now we leave for “The Queen” another pretty sad story were the sea lice has taken up to 90% of the smolts. We will see... I guess one good fish is the goal to try to reach!