Back at the Upper Itchen

Barking at the sky

Ahhh. Finally back at the Upper Itchen!

It´s great to be back up north again. Early summer is a magical time above the arctic circle, with nature exploding in the perpetual daylight. The transition between winter and summer is incredibly short – spring up here lasts for a couple of weeks – so everything is just so much faster and more intense than in southern Scandinavia. It has to be. And with summer arriving late this year because of this winter´s enormous snowfall and low temperatures in May, the action seems to be even more compressed than usual.

Despite the cold
, wet and windy weather, yesterday´s 2012 debut in the Upper Itchen was quite sucessful. A decent feathermidge hatch kept a few really good trout rising steadily. I caught and released several good fish, including a 1,2 kg beauty. Not bad for such a small creek – and a real monster was observed, too.

Hopefully
, the coming days will bring slightly warmer weather. The hatches of the mayfly Leptophlebia marginata are spectacular in the Upper Itchen, and after the marginatas come the proper Mayflies – Ephemera vulgata and Ephemera danica. And then the caddisflies arrive…

I can´t wait.

3 Comments

Petsi

I think Håvard might have done some deals with the devil, for some places… I dunno

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Bartek Rumiński

Hi Håvard:-)

On one of your pictures with truttico I’ve discovered a new reel of yours. Before, on films, I’ve seen that you had a guidline reel. Where can I get the new one, from which website and what is it called ???

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