I decided to reward myself for my hard work over the past few days paving the patio in my garden by dragging myself up at an unchristian hour on the morning of July 9th and dashing east to Lake Þingvallavatn.
I felt I had earned the right to be alone with myself by the lake for a morning session. The weather was nothing special when I started heading east—pouring rain and a bit of wind. I didn’t let that stop me, knowing that if one always recoils from the weather in this country, one stays home quite often.
When I arrived east, it turned out to be much brighter over Þingvellir than the city. I drove south past Arnarfell. There, the wind was so calm that the midges could roam free. Annoyed by the discomfort the midges caused me, I thought of the stories of the ‘midge-scourge’ before the damming of the Sog River. The scourge is said to have been so intense that it drove men and beasts mad. Here, Össur Skarphéðinsson quotes the words of Pétur M. Jónasson, a limnologist and shepherd at the farm Miðfell for several years. Pétur is from that farm, which is located on the eastern side of Þingvallavatn.
‘I found the black fly at Mývatn to be nothing compared to what came out of the Sog after Midsummer when the first and by far the largest swarm arrived. ... There weren’t just plumes rising up like at Mývatn, but literally blue clouds that blocked out the sun.’
Otherwise, I recommend that those interested in Þingvallavatn read the books Þingvallavatn: A Wonderland in the Making by Pétur and The Brown Trout Dance (Urriðadans) by Össur.
Back to the fishing trip. I started fishing on the east bank south of Arnarfell. After about an hour, I hooked one snail-char (large-headed benthic char), and soon after, I hooked another. Both took a Black Mobutu fly, which mimics the water snails that the snail-char is so fond of. No more char were landed on this trip. I then decided to move north of Arnarfell and tried fishing west of Hallvík. There was no life there, so I took the time to take photos for this account. I ended by checking out Öfugsnáði, and there was also little going on. Shortly after noon, I started my journey home
