We had extremely low water running, about 30 m³/s and continually dropping (Byske fishes good between 40 to 60 m³/s), and even so, the force of the river running through the small canyon-shaped run in Fällfors gives you an idea about what the fish have to go through.
You can check the water level in Byske here: https://www.smhi.se/vadret/vadret-i-sverige/observationer#ws=wpt-a,proxy=wpt-a,tab=all,param=all,stationid=2284,type=water
The salmon ladder has an observation window where if you are lucky enough, you can see the salmon running upriver. And lucky we were:
The measuring scale on the border of the window shows the size of this salmon around 100 cm.
On the opposite side there is another ladder where you can almost always spot salmon waiting in queue to start running upstream. They are so close you can touch them. Really amazing fish.
We continued our journey towards Zone 5, which after the whole trip I can safely say it is the wildest and most beautiful part of the river for me personally.
We have spotted some amazing places and pools, some easy, some very difficult, with lots of big boulders and very deep sumps in between where wading is close to impossible, and also spots with very good and easy casting possibilities.
Some areas, like the one behind, has a lot of potential for grayling fishing, being fairly shallow.
Other pools run deep and slow where presenting the fly correctly can be a challenge.
And other spots, like the one below, makes you wander first where can you run with the fish, if you hit one, landing a salmon in these kind of pools being a challenge on its own.
The sun and hot weather kept on tormenting us, air temperatures around 26-27 °C being the rule.
We started praying secretly for the rain to come.
On our way back to the cabin, we saw the first and only moose of the trip slowly crossing the road and waiting for us to pass at the edge of the macadam, being so close you can almost touch her.
It was Monday, the 11th of June and Vlad and Silviu were on their way, so we started fixing dinner so that we can all hit the river in the night and celebrate their arrival on the most beautiful pool we have seen so far, high in Zone 5.
Vlad and Silviu arrived in the evening and we rejoined the band of brothers.
We were all dead tired, me and Thorsten after beating the water for 3 days without success and walking miles of bad terrain to spot pools, Silviu and Vlad after a very long trip starting in Regensburg, Germany, and ending up high in Byske, but we were happy to be together and we pushed it for the magic pool in zone 5.
We were all tired as puck but as it usually happens, we found ourselves casting endlessly into the sunny night.
We also had collateral damages :)
We spotted a salmon that kept on rising endlessly in the same spot until it drove us crazy.
We took turns in casting all the flies in the box, different heads, different speeds, all in vain.
Kept on rising like a giant bar of silver splitting the water in front of us and ignoring our efforts completely.
We finally gave up around 5 am and decided it was a “she”.
We crawled to the car bitterly disappointment and with the moral lower than the sole of our boots, and forced ourselves not to fall asleep on our way home.
We were so tired that we couldn’t even speak, so we hit the beds and slept like horses almost the whole day through, until ca. 5 p.m. (…)