Those of us who pursue wild trout secretly dream that one day we might end up clutching that piscatorial Holy Grail-a double figure specimen. I’d come agonisingly close on several occasions when visiting NZ under the Fly Odyssey banner. In truth, you’d be hard pushed to find anywhere better and if only fate hadn’t been so cruel, I might well have got my sticky mitts on a trophy some time ago!
Literally poles apart, my dream finally became reality at the opposite end of the planet in Iceland on a recent fact finding mission for Angling iQ to work more closely with Fly Odyssey. And like the proverbial London buses…incredibly, three leviathans came along at once. Of course, not all in the same session you understand. Yet, to initially capture a glass case specimen then eclipse it twice over pretty much remains incomprehensible to me.
Measuring 32.5 inches and a whisker shy of 16lb the largest came on my last evening, close to midnight. What staggered me most was the remarkable condition of this creature, a spanking bar of silver, decorated in leopard like spots…a perfect example of Ice Age trout in its prime. Odd that we find the biggest trout at the extremes of both the northern and southern hemisphere!
Paul Procter June 2015
