My wife and I had been working like crazy in the garden all weekend, but late Sunday afternoon, we tossed our gear into the car and headed to Lake Þingvallavatn, as we so often do. We parked east of Arnarfell and hiked north around the mountain, eventually reaching the water at Ólafsdráttur. I’ve tried my luck there three times before without much success. Guðrún found the area beautiful, and it didn't hurt that we had the whole place to ourselves. There was hardly any wind—just a light breeze from the west. The temperature was 16–18°C when we started but had dropped to 8°C by the time we packed up around ten o'clock.
I started casting in the northern part of the fishing area. The Pheasant Tail fly was my first choice. Right on the first cast, a 2.6-pound brown trout took my fly, and shortly after, a 1.2-pound brown trout took Guðrún's spinner. I decided to wade along the northern side of Arnarfell and fish the bank on my way back. The wading staff I won in a raffle at the Reykjavík Angling Club (SVFR) thirty years ago finally came in handy. It had been sitting unused in a closet since then, but I decided to give it a try now. The bottom of Lake Þingvallavatn can be quite tricky, after all. In the summer of 2020, I caught a decent snail-eating Arctic char in the bay east of Búr, but this time, there was nothing to be found there. A bit further east, however, one struck but got away, followed quickly by another. That one took a Frisco fly. I managed to land it, and it weighed in at 1.5 pounds.
