The wind was blowing from the southeast when I reached the lake early in the morning. It wasn’t nearly as strong as during the last trip, making it easy to cast the flies to where the fish were—or rather, to where I thought the fish were.
I started at Vatnskot and found myself entirely alone. As far as I could tell, I was the only person fishing the entire lake. Anglers have clearly become so spoiled that they won’t venture out unless the sun is shining in a clear sky! On the fourth of July, the weather was decent but overcast.
After a while, I gave up on Vatnskot and moved over to Öfugsnáði. It took me a moment to find my bearings there. I think I’ve only tried fishing at Öfugsnáði twice before and never caught a fish. No, that’s a lie—the Murta (dwarf Arctic char) is a fish too, and I caught several of them. Last year, I caught no Murta at all, which I found worrying. I wondered if the brown trout population had grown so large that they were decimating the Murta, potentially being responsible for its decline but the subsequent size increase of the snail-eating char. The Murta was my only catch this trip. I called it a day around noon and listened to the midday news on the drive home.
