These days, we have very little time for leisure, so there is less fishing than usual. However, my wife and I did bring our gear to Brautarlækur this weekend, as there’s a brief window of calm amidst the construction work. After tinkering for a while at the building site, we drove over to Lake Selvatn on Saturday evening. Selvatn lies just over the ridge above Hreðavatn. That’s where Gummi Daníels, an old acquaintance of Guðrún’s, built himself a woodland cabin.
I could see that Guðrún was hoping Gummi would be there, though she didn’t expect it, as he is now an elderly man. As it turned out, he wasn’t home, so she couldn’t greet the ‘woodsman’ and renew the fishing permit she received as a teenager. She had worked at the Hreðavatn farm for four summers in her youth; that’s where she met Gummi and was granted a lifelong fishing permit for the lakes belonging to the estate.
It’s fair to say that the permit hasn’t been used to its full potential. While we’ve fished Hreðavatn a few times, we’ve only visited Selvatn once before. This time, we wanted to see if the southern side of the lake was more promising, as we discovered last year that fly casting was difficult on the northern side. The weather was beautiful as we walked from the cabin toward the lake. It felt as though we were stepping into a fairy-tale world; the vegetation surrounds everything there, and the Forestry Service has planted extensively. The trees have grown quite tall. We ‘moorland people’ aren’t used to such lush greenery.
The fishing itself was nothing to shout about, but there were fish. After four hours of tinkering about, we had landed five brown trout. Since they were small, that provides just enough for two grilled meals for the two of us.