Rodny Byles goes to Sweden in search of some sport with sea trout!

Rod has sent me this report from his recent trip to Sweden. At last I have some pictures of sea trout on my blog!

'I have been going to Sweden for well over 30 years on business and always wanted to fish there but never seemed to have the time. So during my last and recent visit I decided I would definitely make time for fishing the fly for Baltic sea trout. I opted to fish one of Sweden’s best sea trout rivers, the Dalaven at Alvkarleby, around 100 miles north of Stockholm and a few miles from the Baltic coast. There is a good train connection from Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport to Alvkarleby costing about SEK300 return (about £25).

I stayed at the local and comfortable Alvkarleby hotel – they also have much cheaper self catering options – and bought my fishing ticket costing SEK160/day, about £13.60. Fishing when I was there in mid April was from 5am to 9pm. I was in for a big surprise. The river was very wide, about 150 yards in places, very fast flowing between 400 and 500m3/sec and water temperature quite cold at around 4ºC. The nearby hydroelectric power station regulates the flow and the river was up and down like a fiddler’s elbow.

My new 10ft Sage, equipped with fast sinking line and heavy tube, was also the wrong tool and much too short for the task in hand. All the other “sensible” local fly anglers, were deep wading and using 15ft double-handers with 750 grain fast sinking lines and casting well over 50 yards or more. Interestingly all were using large arbour Loop reels. Still I gave it my best shot with my little wand and stuck to the margins and managed a “first” by catching and releasing two bream on a 2inch tube!!!



There were some nice sea trout caught on the sunk fly (see photos) up to 3.6kilos (8lb in old money). But most anglers were either spinning or using the preferred method of a paternoster system of a fly tied on a longish cast linked to a heavy weight trotted down along the bottom in the fast flow. Salmon also run up in the summer and biggest caught a couple of years back weighed just under 28 kilos, that’s around 60lbs!!!



The Alvkarleby fishery bailiff and local Swedish and Finnish anglers were all exceptionally friendly and helpful, making for a very enjoyable but “blank” visit. I even made friends with a very tame Red Squirrel (see photo) and the miles of walking I did in the fresh air was also a great tonic for my recently repaired “ticker”. However, I was very disappointed with the amount of nylon line left discarded on the riverbank just waiting to get tangled up in birds’ legs. I picked up hundreds, yes hundreds of yards of the stuff and put it in the numerous waste bins along the river.



As I left the river I looked over the main bridge with my polaroids and watched for about 10-15 minutes in the bright warm sunshine a constant stream of sea trout nose to tail and 3-4-5 abreast slowly making there way upstream. There were hundreds of them and never seen so many in one place before. An amazing sight.





For those interested have a look at the link'.

http://www.alvkarlebysportfiske.nu/